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AMERICANA EBRIETATIS 

Byegone Ways of Byegone Days 



ONE HUNDRED COPIES OF THIS 
EDITION HAVE BEEN PRINTED 
FOR SALE AND THE TYPE DIS- 
TRIBUTED 



Americana Cforietatttf; 

THE 

Favorite Tipple of our Forefathers 

and the Laws and Customs 

Relating Thereto 



BY 
HEWSON L. PEEKE 



€S^ 



PRIVATELY PRINTED 
NEW YORK, 1917 






Copyrighted 1917 by 
HEWSON L. PEEKE 



APR 16 017 



CI.A457946 



To my father, Rev. Geo. H. Peeke, whose 
vote followed his prayers, this little book 
is dedicated, except the chapter on the 
"Church and the Clergy," which is dedi- 
cated to that large majority of the ministry 
who vote one way and pray the opposite, as 
their clerical forefathers did. These pages 
are not written to prove any theory or fact 
except the growth of sentiment in the last 
two centuries against the liquor traffic. 
Though prepared somewhat as a lawyer 
briefs a case, omitting for the most part 
the citation of authorities, no fact is given 
that does not rest on the authority of some 
writer. The authority can be produced if 
required. The research represents the cull- 
ing of some four hundred volumes. 

H. L. Peeke 



The reprint of Ebrietatis Encomium, 
London, 1723, led many of my friends to 
suggest the desirability of a more modern 
work on the later views and customs con- 
cerning drunkenness. Thanks to the most 
timely and exceptional research of the au- 
thor, I present for their delectation a treatise 
along this very line, which will pleasantly 
while away a winter evening. 

L. M. Thompson 



CONTENTS 

Chapter I Customs based on Race 

Source of Population . . 13 
Chapter II Early Attempts at Regu- 
lation by Legislation .... 24 

Tariffs 31 

Internal Revenue Tax . . . .35 
Chapter III Schools and Colleges . 37 
Chapter IV Bench and Bar ... 46 
Chapter V Church and Clergy . . 55 
Chapter VI Relation of George Wash- 
ington to the Liquor Traffic . . 64 
Relation of other Prominent Americans 
to the Liquor Traffic .... 74 
Chapter VII The Slave Trade . . 85 
The Southern Planter .... 89 

The Indian Tribes 93 

Politics and Elections . . . .108 
Early Defiance of Law . . . .111 
Chapter VIII Christenings — Marriages 

— Funerals 116 

Chapter IX Vendues — Chopping Bees 

— House Bees — Wood Spells — Clear- 
ing Bees 127 

Traveling and Taverns . . . .132 



io Contents 



Chapter X Extent and Effect of the 

Traffic at Flood Tide . . . .145 

Whiskey as Money 149 

Temperance Societies . . . .150 



CHAPTER I 

Customs Based on Race Source of 
Population 

In order to understand the laws, social 
habits, and customs in regard to the use of 
liquor it seems proper to consider briefly the 
sources of the population of the different 
states and of the country generally. At the 
time when America was settled, no Euro- 
pean people drank water as we do today for 
a constant beverage. The English drank 
ale, the Dutch beer, the French and Spanish 
light wines, for every day use. Hence it 
seemed to the colonists a dangerous experi- 
ment to drink water in the New World. 
The Dutch were great beer drinkers and 
quickly established breweries at Albany and 
New York. Before the century ended New 
Englanders had abandoned the constant 
drinking of ale and beer for cider. Cider 
was very cheap ; but a few shillings a barrel. 



14 Americana Ebrietatis 

It was supplied in large amounts to students 
at college and even very little children 
drank it. President John Adams was an 
early and earnest wisher for temperance re- 
form ; but, to the end of his life, he drank a 
large tankard of hard cider every morning 
when he first got up. It was free in every 
farmhouse to all travelers and tramps. As 
years passed on and great wealth came to 
individuals the tables of the opulent Dutch 
rivalled the luxury of English and French 
houses of wealth. When Doctor Cutler 
dined with Colonel Duer in New York in 
1787 there were fifteen kinds of wine served, 
^y besides beer, cider, and porter. In the 
Dutch cellar might be found apples, pars- 
nips, turnips, etc., along with barrels of 
vinegar, cider, and ale, and canty brown 
jugs of rum. In the houses of the wealthier 
classes there was also plenty of wine, either 
of the claret family or some kind of sack, 
which was a name covering sherries, cana- 
ries, and madeiras. Teetotalism would have 
been quite unintelligible to the farmer or 
burgher of those healthy days of breezy ac- 
tivity out of doors. In the Dutch cupboard 



Customs Based on Race Source 15 

or on the sideboard always stood the gleam- 
ing decanter of cut-glass or the square high- 
shouldered magnum of aromatic schnapps. 
The drinking habits of the Dutch colonists 
were excessive. Tempered in their tastes 
somewhat by the universal brewing and 
drinking of beer, they did not use as much 
as the Puritans of New England, nor drink 
as deeply as the Virginia planters, but the 
use of liquor was universal. A libation was 
poured on every transaction at every hap- 
pening of the community; in public as well 
as private life John Barleycorn was a wit- 
ness at the drawing of a contract, the signing 
of a deed, the selling of a farm, the purchase 
of goods, the arbitration of a suit. If a 
party backed out from a contract he did not 
back out from the treat. Liquor was served 
at vendues and made the bidders expansive. 
It appeared at weddings, funerals, church 
openings, deacon ordainings, and house rais- 
ings. No farm hand in haying, no sailor 
on a vessel, no workman in a mill, no cob- 
bler, tailor, carpenter, mason, or tinker 
would work without some strong drink or 
treat. The bill for liquor where many 



16 Americana Ebrietatis 

workmen were employed at a house raising 
was often a heavy one. 

As to New England, Eugene Lawrence 
in his papers on colonial progress, says, 
"wines and liquors were freely consumed 
by our ancestors and even New England 
had as yet (1775) no high repute for tem- 
perance. Rum was taken as a common 
restorative." The Puritans had no objec- 
tion to wine, and in latter colonial times 
hard drinking was very common even 
among ministers; but they were much op- 
posed to health drinking which was too 
jovial and pleasant to suit their gloomy 
principles. Doctor Peters thus speaks of 
Connecticut: 

"The various fruits are in greater perfec- 
tion than in England. The peach and apple 
are more luscious, beautiful, and large; one 
thousand peaches are produced from one 
tree ; five or six barrels of cider from one ap- 
ple tree. Cider is the common drink at the 
table. The inhabitants have a method of 
purifying cider by frost and separating the 
watery part from the spirit, which, being se- 
cured in proper vessels and colored by In- 



Customs Based on Race Source 17 

dian corn, becomes, in three months so much 
like Madeira wine, that Europeans drink it 
without perceiving the difference. They 
make peachy and perry, grape and currant 
wines, and good beers of pumpkin, molasses, 
bran of wheat, spruce, and malt." 

Perry was made from pears, as cider is 
from apples, and peachy from peaches. 
Metheglin and mead, drinks of the old 
Druids in England, were made from honey, 
yeast, and water. In Virginia whole plan- 
tations of the honey locust furnished locust 
beans for making metheglin. From per- 
simmons, elderberries, juniper berries, 
pumpkins, cornstalks, hickory nuts, sassa- 
fras bark, birch bark, and many other leaves 
and roots various light wines were made. 
An old song boasted : 

Oh we can make liquor to sweeten our lips 
Of pumpkins, of parsnips, of walnut-tree ^ 
chips. 

Beer was brewed in families, and the or- 
chards soon yielded an abundance of cider. 
In 1721 the production of cider increased so 
that one village of forty families made three 
thousand barrels, and in 1728 Judge Joseph 



1 8 Americana Ebrietatis 

Wilder, of Lancaster, made six hundred and 
sixteen barrels himself. 

When the Quakers framed their consti- 
tution for Pennsylvania they inserted claus- 
es punishing swearing, intemperance, card- 
playing, and the drinking of healths. They 
were mighty drinkers in their sober fashion, 
consuming vast quantities of ale and spirits, 
and making no serious inroads on the pure 
and wholesome water, although we are 
gravely assured that particular pumps, one 
on Walnut Street, and one in Norris Alley, 
were held in especial favor as having the 
best water in town for the legitimate pur- 
pose of boiling greens. Their first beer was 
made from molasses, and we have Penn's 
assurance that, when "well boyled with Sas- 
safras or Pine infused into it," this was a 
very tolerable drink. Rum punch was also 
in liberal demand, and after a few years the 
thirsty colonists began to brew ale, and 
drank it out of deep pewter mugs." 

When Congress met in 1774, in Philadel- 
phia, John Adams was shocked by the dis- 
play of eatables. His appetite overcame his 
scruples, although after each feast he 



Customs Based on Race Source 19 

scourged himself for yielding. After dining 
with Mr. Miers, a young Quaker lawyer, 
Adams remarks in his diary: 

"A mighty feast again ; nothing less than 
the very best of Claret, Madeira, and Bur- 
gundy. I drank Madeira at a great rate 
and found no inconvenience. This plain 
Friend and his plain though pretty wife, 
with her Thees and Thous, had provided us 
the most costly entertainment, ducks, hams, 
chickens, beef, pig, tarts, creams, custards, 
jellies, fools, trifles, floating islands, beer, 
porter, punch, wine, etc." 

Again after dining at Mr. Powell's: 
"A most sinful feast again: Everything 
which could delight the eye, or allure the 
taste, curds, and creams, jellies, sweetmeats 
of various kinds, twenty sorts of tarts, fools, 
trifles, floating islands, whipped syllabubs, 
etc. Parmesan cheese, punch, wine, porter, 
beer, etc." 

The Swedes planted peach and fruit trees 
of all kinds, had flourishing gardens, and 
grew rich selling the products when the 
Quakers arrived. They made wine, beer, or 
brandy out of sassafras, persimmons, corn, 



20 Americana Ebrietatis 

and apparently anything that could be made 
to ferment and they imported Madeira. 
Acrelius, their historian, gives a long list of 
their drinks, and tells us that they always in- 
dulged in four meals a day. 

In the True and Sincere Declaration, is- 
sued in December, 1609, by the Governor 
and Council for Virginia, there was an ad- 
vertisement for two brewers, who, as soon 
as they were secured, were to be dispatched 
to the Colony. Brewers were also includ- 
ed among the tradesmen who were de- 
signed by the Company to go over with 
Sir Thomas Gates. This indicated the 
importance in the eyes of that corpora- 
tion of establishing the means in Virginia 
of manufacturing malt liquors on the spot 
instead of relying on the importation from 
England. The notion arose that one of 
the principal causes of mortality so preva- 
lent among those arriving in the Colony, 
in the period following the first settle- 
ment of the country, was the substitution of 
water for beer to which the immigrants had 
been accustomed in England. The Assem- 
bly, in the session of 1623, went so far as to 



Customs Based on Race Source 21 

recommend that all new comers should 
bring in a supply of malt to be used in brew- 
ing liquor, thus making it unnecessary to 
drink the water of Virginia until the body 
had become hardened to the climate. Pre- 
vious to 1625, tw brew-houses were in op- 
eration in the Colony, and the patronage 
they received was evidently very liberal. 
Cider was in as common use as beer; in 
season it was found in the house of every 
planter in the Colony. It was the form 
of consideration in which rent was occa- 
sionally settled; the instance of Alexan- 
der Moore, of New York, shows the 
quantity often bequeathed: he left at his 
decease twenty gallons of raw cider and 
one hundred and thirty of boiled. Rich- 
ard Moore of the same county kept on hand 
as many as fourteen cider casks. Richard 
Bennett made about twenty butts of cider 
annually, while Richard Kinsman com- 
pressed from the pears growing in his or- 
chard forty or fifty of perry. A supply of 
spirits was provided for the members of 
public bodies when they convened. The 
character of the liquors used depended on 



22 Americana Ebrietatis 

the nature of the assemblage. When Charles 
Hansford and David Condon, as executors of 
the widow of the unfortunate Thomas Hans- 
ford, leased her residence in York to the 
justice of the peace of that county to serve 
as a court house, they bound themselves tp 
furnish not only accommodations for horses, 
but also a gallon of brandy during each ses- 
sion of the bench. It is not stated whether 
this brandy was consumed by the honorable 
justices in the form of the drink which had 
become so famous in later times in Virginia, 
the mint julep, but if mint was cultivated in 
the colony at that age, it is quite probable 
that a large part of this gallon was convert- 
ed into that mixture. In 1666 the justices 
of Lower Norfolk county rented the tract of 
land on which the court house was situated, 
on condition that the lessee, in part consider- 
ation for the use of the houses and orchards 
each year, would pay ten gallons brewed 
from English grain. The members of the 
Council appear to have been fastidious in 
their tastes. It was one of the duties of the 
auditor-general to have a large quantity of 
wine always ready at hand for this body. 



Customs Based on Race Source 23 

Thus on one occasion William Byrd, who 
filled the office in the latter part of the cen- 
tury, ordered for their use twenty dozen of 
claret, and six dozen of canary, sherry, and 
Rhenish, respectively. A quarter of a cask 
of brandy was also to be added. 



CHAPTER II 

Early Attempts at Regulation by Legislation 

This unrestrained indulgence in liquor, 
which previous to 1624 na d excited the crit- 
icism of the company, called down on the 
Colony on several occasions the animadver- 
sion of the Royal Governor after he had 
taken charge of affairs in Virginia. In 1625 
Governor Yeardley was instructed to sup- 
press drunkenness by severe punishments, 
and to dispose of the spirits brought into the 
Colony in such manner that it would go to 
the relief and comfort of the whole planta- 
tion instead of falling into the hands of 
those who would abuse it. He received ad- 
ditional orders to return to the importers all 
liquors shown to be decayed or unwhole- 
some. The injunction to withhold all liquors 
imported into the Colony from persons who 
were guilty of excess in the use of them was 
repeated. 

The attempts to prevent drunkenness were 



Early Attempts at Regulation 2$ 

not confined to instructions to the Govern- 
ors, given by the authorities in England. 
From the first session of the first assembly, 
no legislative means were left unemployed 
to accomplish the same object. In 1619 it 
was provided that the person guilty in this 
respect should for the first offense be pri- 
vately reproved by his minister; for the sec- 
ond, publicly; for the third be imprisoned 
for twelve hours; and if still incorrigible be 
punished as the Governor directed. 

In March, 1623-4, tne church-wardens in 
every parish were ordered to present all per- 
sons guilty of drunkenness to the commander 
of the plantation. In 163 1-2 the offender 
was required to pay five shillings into the 
hands of the nearest vestry, and this fine 
could be made good by levy on his property. 
In 1657-8 the person guilty of inebriety was 
punished by a very heavy fine, and also ren- 
dered incapable of being a witness in court, 
or bearing office under the government of 
the Colony. In 1691 the penalty for drunk- 
enness was ten shillings, and if unable to pay 
the sum, the offender was to be exposed in 
the stocks for the space of two hours. 






26 Americana Ebrietatis 

In 1668 there were so many taverns and 
tippling houses in the Colony that it was 
found necessary to reduce the number in 
each county to one or two, unless, for the ac- 
commodation of travelers, more should be 
needed at ports, ferries, and the crossings of 
great roads, in addition to that which was 
erected at the court house. 

Drunkards were severely punished and 
were set in the stocks and whipped. On 
September 3, 1633, in Boston one Robert 
Coles was "fined ten shillings and enjoined 
to stand with a white sheet of paper on his 
back, whereon Drunkard shall be written in 
great lynes, and to stand therewith soe long 
as the court find meet, for abusing himself 
shamefully with drinke." Robert Coles for 
"drunkenness by him committed at Rocks- 
bury shall be disfranchised, weare about his 
neck, and so to hang upon his outward gar- 
ment a D made of redd cloth & sett upon 
white; to continue this for a yeare, & not to 
have it off any time hee comes among com- 
pany, under the penalty of one shilling for 
the first offense, and five pounds for the sec- 
ond, and afterwards to be punished by the 



Early Attempts at Regulation 27 

Court as they think meet: also he is to weave # 
the D outwards." 

Lists of names of common drunkards were 
given to landlords in some towns, and land- 
lords were warned not to sell liquor to them. 
Licenses were removed and fines imposed 
on those who did not heed the warning. The 
tithing man, that most bumptious public 
functionary of colonial times, was at first 
the official appointed to spy specially on the 
ordinaries. He inspected these houses, made 
complaints of any disorders he discovered, 
and gave into the constable the names of 
idle drinkers and gamers. He warned the 
keepers of public houses to sell no more 
liquor to any whom he fancied had been 
tippling too freely. 

John Josslyn, an English visitor in Boston 
in 1663, complained bitterly thus: 

"At houses of entertainment into which a 
stranger went, he was presently followed by 
one appointed to that office, who would 
thrust himself into the company uninvited, 
and if he called for more drink than the 
officer thought in his judgment he could so- 
berly bear away, he would presently coun- 



28 Americana Ebrietatis 

termand it, and appoint the proportion, be- 
yond which he could not get one drop." 

The prisons found little occupation as 
compared with the pillory and the whipping 
post. The latter was the common corrector 
of drunkenness. We have an amusing de-* 
scription of what constitutes drunkenness, 
from Colonel Dodberry : "Now for to know 
a drunken man the better, the Scriptures de- 
scribes them to stagger and reel to and fro; 
and so when the same legs which carry a 
man into the house can not bring him out 
again, it is a sufficient sign of drunkenness." 

In 1676, during the supremacy of Na- 
thaniel Bacon, at which time so many laws 
were passed for the purpose of suppressing 
long standing abuses, a legislative attempt 
was made to enforce what practically 
amounted to general prohibition. The li- 
censes of all inns, alehouses, and tippling- 
houses, except those at James City, and at 
the two great ferries of York River, were 
revoked. The keepers of the ordinaries 
which were permitted to remain open at the 
latter places were allowed to sell only beer 
and cider. This regulation was remarkable 



Early Attempts at Regulation 29 

in that it was adopted by the action of the 
people, who must have been the principal 
customers of the tippling houses, if not of 
the inns. Not content with putting a stop to 
sales in public places, the framers of the 
regulation further prescribed that "no one 
should presume to sell any sort of drink 
whatsoever, by retail, under any color, pre- 
tence, delusion, or subtle evasion whatso- 
ever, to be drunk or spent in his or their 
house or houses, upon his or their plantation 
or plantations." 

The general court of Massachusetts on 
one occasion required the proper officers 
to notice the apparel of the people, especial- 
ly their "ribbands and great boots." Drink- 
ing of healths in public or private; funeral 
badges; celebrating the church festivals of 
Christmas and Easter; and many other 
things that seemed quite improper to mag- 
istrates and legislators, and especially to the 
Puritan clergy, were forbidden. 

In Pennsylvania men were imprisoned in 
a cage seven feet high, seven feet wide, and 
seven feet long, for selling liquor to the 
Indians and for watering the white man's 



30 Americana Ebrietatis 

rum, both of which offences the law placed 
on equal footing. 

Virginia and New Jersey declared liquor 
debts uncollectible by law. 

Several of the colonies forbade workmen 
to be paid in liquor. In Massachusetts, in 
1764, the law required that all who bought s 
\J liquor should render an account of it except 
state officers, professors and students of 
Harvard College, and preachers of the gos- 
pel. 

The law frequently manifested great con- 
cern about the clergy. Virginia had a stat- 
ute making it an offence for a minister to 
appear drunk in his pulpit on Sunday, and 
in addition the following statute : 

"Ministers shall not give themselves to 
excess in drinking or riot, spending their 
time idly by day or by night, playing at dice, 
cards, or any unlawful game, but at all times 
convenient they shall hear or read some 
what of the Holy Scriptures." 

It is one of the curiosities of old time leg- 
islation that the use of tobacco was in earliest 
colonial days plainly regarded by the magis- 
trates and elders as far more sinful, degrad- 



Tariffs 3 1 

ing, and harmful than indulgence in intox- 
icating liquors. No one could take tobacco 
"publicquely" nor in his own house, or any- 
where else before strangers. Two men were 
forbidden to smoke together. No one could 
smoke within two miles of the meeting 
house on the Sabbath day. There were 
wicked backsliders who were caught smok- 
ing around the corner of the meeting house, 
and others in the street, and they were fined 
and set in the stocks and in cages. 

Tariffs 

After the thirteen colonies had formed "a 
more perfect union" the question of revenue 
caused a heated discussion. Of the many 
ways through which a sure revenue might 
flow into the treasury none seemed as desir- 
able as an impost. Of molasses, two mil- 
lions of gallons came into the country each 
year. A few hundreds of thousands of these 
were consumed as food. The remainder 
were hurried to the Massachusetts distiller- 
ies and there made into the far-famed New 
England rum, which by the fishermen at the 
Grand Banks was thought much finer than 



32 Americana Ebrietatis 

the best that came from Jamaica. All other 
goods brought into any port in the country 
were to be taxed at five per cent of their 
value. 

A long list of articles was given on which 
special duties were to be paid. At the head 
of the list stood Jamaica rum, which on mo- 
tion was changed to distilled spirits of Ja- 
maica proof. Two duties were suggested, 
one of fifteen cents on the gallon, which 
speedily divided the committee. Some 
thought such rates too high. Some declared 
they were much too low. And before the 
discussion had gone far it turned into a de- 
bate on the good and ill effects of high du- 
ties and low duties. One low tariff member 
remarked that the first thing to be consid- 
ered in laying a tax was the likelihood of 
gathering it, and that as taxes increased this 
likelihood decreased. "I trust," said he, 
"it does not need illustration to convince 
every member of the committee that a high 
duty is a very strong temptation to smug- 
gling. Just in the proportion which a tax 
bears to the value of an article is the risk 
men will run in their attempts to bring in 



Tariffs 33 

that article in an illegal way. This im- 
pairs the revenue, and in time so much 
comes in through the hands of smugglers 
that no revenue is yielded at all." Boudi- 
not said "he for one would be glad to see 
Jamaica rum doing just that very thing." 
There were three good results that would 
come of a high rum tariff: The treasury 
wanted money, and surely there was no arti- 
cle on the lists of taxable goods so likely to 
furnish a revenue as rum; the importation 
would be discouraged, and that was bene- 
ficial to the morals of the people ; the West 
Indian distilleries would have no induce- 
ment to turn their molasses into rum, and 
as they had no markets for molasses save 
those of the United States, the home stills 
would be set actively to work. 

These remarks on the moral effects of the 
tax were violently attacked by two members 
from the eastward. Fisher Ames quite for- 
got himself, and reminded the committee, 
with great vehemence of gesture and speech, 
that they were not in church or at school, to 
sit listening to harangues of speculative 
piety. We are, exclaimed he, to talk of the 



34 Americana Ebrietatis 

political interests committed to our care. 
When we take up the subject of morality 
then let our system look toward morality, 
and not confound itself with revenue and 
the protection of manufactures. If any 
man supposes that a mere law can turn the 
taste of a people from ardent spirits to malt 
liquors, he has a most romantic notion of 
legislative power. Lawrence, one of the 
members from New York, took up the at- 
tack. He was for low tariff. "If," said 
he, "the committee is to reason and act as 
moralists, the arguments of the member 
from New Jersey are sound. For it must 
be the wish of every man of sense to dis- 
courage the use of articles so ruinous to 
health and morals as rum. But we are to 
act as politicians, not as moralists. Rum, 
not morality, is to be taxed. Money, not 
sobriety, is the object of the tax." 

The justness of this reasoning was lost on 
the committee, and spirits of Jamaica proof 
were taxed at fifteen cents a gallon. The 
duty finally levied on all distilled spirits was 
due to the influence of Hamilton, whose first 



Internal Revenue Tax 35 

tariff bill also imposed a duty on glass, 
"with the significant reservation," as Blaine 
states, "in deference to popular habits that 
black quart bottles should be admitted free." 

Internal Revenue Tax 

The system of internal taxation by the 
federal government began on that memora- 
ble day in 1791 when Washington signed 
the bill laying a duty on domestic distilled 
spirits; a tax which, proving more harsh in 
its operations than was expected, was amend- 
ed in 1792, and after being denounced by 
legislatures and by mass meetings as op- 
pressive, unequal, and unjust, was openly 
resisted by the people of western Pennsyl- 
vania, who rose in armed rebellion in 1794. 
In that same year taxes were laid on licenses 
for retailing wine and liquor, and on the 
manufacture of snuff, tobacco, and refined 
sugar, on carriages, and on sales at auction. 

In 1 801 the taxes on carriages, on licenses 
for retailing liquor, on snuff and refined 
sugar, on sales at auction, when about to ex- 
pire, were continued without a time limit; 



/ 



36 Americana Ebrietatis 

but the next year the republicans were in 
control, and every kind of internal tax was 
abolished with exultation. 

With this record behind them the two par- 
ties met in the extra session of the thirteenth 
congress and changed places. The federal- 
ists became the enemies of taxation; the re- 
publicans became its advocates, and before 
the session ended taxed pleasure carriages, 
sales at auction, sugar refineries, salt, licenses 
to sell liquor at retail ; laid a stamp tax on all 
kinds of legal documents, taxed whiskey 
stills, imposed a direct tax of three million 
dollars and brought back all the machinery 
of assessment and collection, and again 
turned loose in the land the tax gatherer and 
what they had once called his minions. As 
some months must necessarily pass before any 
money could be raised from these sources, 
another loan of seven million and a half was 
authorized. From this time until the pres- 
ent liquor has been constantly taxed both by 
state and nation, and has been relied on to 
furnish a large part of the public revenue. 



CHAPTER III 

Schools and Colleges 

What the common schools of a century or 
two ago must have been is indicated by a de- 
scription of the colleges which will here- 
after be given in this chapter. Many of the 
school-masters were ignorant, and in addi- 
tion were much addicted to the use of intox- 
icating liquors. The first of whom we have 
any trace was Jan Roelandsen, a New York 
school-master, who is on record as lying 
drunk for a month at a time, and being in- 
corrigibly lazy. He was the first of many. 
Winthrop, in his History of New England, 
describes the censuring of Nathaniel Eton, 
a school-master, for furnishing insufficient 
board to his scholars, in which proceeding 
his wife testified that the bread and beer was 
always free for the boarders to go to. In 
1693 a school bill for a couple of boys of the 
Lloyd family of Long Island contained the 
following items: 

A bottle of wine for his mistress 10 d. 
Wormwood and rubab 6 d. 



38 Americana Ebrietatis 

While the boys took the drugs the school- 
mistress drank the wine. 

Henry Clay's education was in a district 
school taught in a log cabin by an intemper- 
ate Englishman, and consisted of the merest 
rudiments. Peter Cartwright speaks of his 
school teacher as a Seceder minister who 
would get drunk at times. Washington 
Irving's Ichabod Crane, and Eggleston's 
Hoosier School-master are at least average 
pictures of the country school-masters of an 
early day. The chorus of the school-masters 
seems to have been : 

"Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains 
With grammar and nonsense and learning, 
Good liquor I stoutly maintain 
Gives genius a better discerning." 

Mac Masters describes early college life 
in 1784 as follows: 

"The students lodged in the dormitories 
and ate at the commons. The food then 
partaken of with thankfulness would now 
be looked upon as prison fare. At break- 
fast, which was served at sunrise in summer 
and at day-break in winter, there was doled 
out to each student a small can of unsettled 



Schools and Colleges 39 

coffee, a size of biscuit, and a size of butter 
weighing generally about an ounce. Din- 
ner was the staple meal, and at this each stu- 
dent was regaled with a pound of meat. 
Two days in the week, Monday and Thurs- 
day, the meat was boiled, and, in college 
language, these were known as boiling days. 
On the five remaining days, the meat was 
roasted, and to them the nickname of roast- 
ing days were fastened. With the flesh al- 
ways went potatoes. When boiling days 
came round, pudding and cabbage, wild 
peas and dandelions were added. The only 
delicacy to which no stint was applied was 
the cider, a beverage then fast supplanting 
the small beer of the colonial days. This 
was brought to the mess in pewter cans 
which were passed from mouth to mouth, 
and when emptied were again replenished. 
For supper there was a bowl of milk and a 
size of bread." 

The oldest college in the United States, 
that of William and Mary, was founded by 
the King and Queen of that name, who gave 
it twenty thousand acres of land and a penny 
a pound duty on tobacco exported from Vir- 



4-0 Americana Ebrietatis 

ginia and Maryland. The assembly also 
gave it a duty on imported liquors for its 
support. This was in 1726, and the pro- 
ceeds of the tax were to be devoted to its 
running expenses and the establishment of 
scholarships. Twenty-five years later the 
same benevolent body enriched the college 
with the proceeds of the tax on peddlers. 
Those who are inclined to throw stones at 
the source of these benefactions should re- 
member that Harvard College has more 
than once profited by the gains of an author- 
ized lottery, receiving more than eighteen 
thousand dollars from such a source as late 
as 1805. 

In 1752 the rules of William and Mary 
College required that "spirituous liquors 
were to be used in that moderation which 
became the prudent and industrious stu- 
dent." From the list were excluded all 
liquids but beer, cider, toddy, and spirits 
and water. In 1798, when the Bishop of 
Virginia was president of the college and 
had apartments in the building, the English 
traveler Weld noticed that half a dozen or 



Schools and Colleges 41 

more of the students dined at his table 
one day when he was there. "Some were 
without shoes and stockings, others without 
coats. During the meal they constantly rose 
to help themselves from the sideboard." 

William and Mary College, during the 
days of Jefferson and Monroe, was "a riot 
of pleasure and power, a jumble of royalist 
splendor and patriotic fervor, an awe of 
learning, and indulgence of vice." Thom- 
as Jefferson, the most eminent graduate of 
the college, and its cordial friend, in ad- 
vanced life remembered the "regular an- 
nual riot and battles between the students 
and the town boys;" and bore testimony to 
other greater evils. From one source and 
another have come down to us complaints 
that the college was neither a college, nor a 
grammar school, nor an Indian hospital; 
that its teachers squabbled among them- 
selves to the detriment of their academic 
work; and that some of the professors sent 
out by the bishops of London were drunken, 
quarrelsome, and ignorant of the subjects 
they professed to teach. 



42 Americana Ebrietatis 

The president, representing the bishop, 
might have brought charges against the 
clergy for their flagrant drunkenness but he 
refrained, being himself a notorious drunk- 
ard. Farquier, representative of the crown, 
was the most finished gentleman Virginia 
had known, and also the most demoralizing. 
He introduced a passion for high play that 
ruined many a fine old family, encouraged 
hard drinking and a mania for racing, de- 
lighted in having the clergy and favored 
students join him in his all-night revels. 

Commencement at Harvard in Old New 
England days was a fete indeed; a fete so 
important as to be attended by giant expen- 
ditures and sinful extravagance. Indeed, 
so early as 1722 in its history, an act was 
passed "that henceforth no preparation nor 
provision of either Plumb Cake, or Roasted, 
Boyled or Baked Meats or Pyes of any kind 
shall be made by any Commencer," and that 
"no such have any distilled liquors in his 
Chamber or any composition therewith," 
under penalty of twenty shillings or forfeit- 
ure of the said provisions. Five years later 



Schools and Colleges 43 

several acts were passed "for preventing the 
Excesses, Immoralities and Disorders of the 
Commencements," by way of enforcing the 
foregoing act. These, with a simplicity of 
conclusion which brings a smile, declare 
that "if any who now doe or hereafter shall 
stand for their degrees, presume to doe any- 
thing contrary to the said Act or goe about 
to evade it by Plain Cake," they shall for- 
feit the honors of the college. 

In the latter part of the eighteenth cen- 
tury the Yale College butler held his buttery 
in the ground floor, front corner room, of 
South Middle College, and sold cider, 
metheglin, strong beer, together with loaf 
sugar, etc., to the students. Dr. Lyman 
Beecher, in his autobiography, says of old 
Doctor Dwight, then president of the col- 
lege: "Before he came college was in a 
most ungodly state. . . Wine and liquor 
were kept in many rooms, intemperance, 
profanity, gambling, and licentiousness were 
common." 

John Bacon, afterwards United States 
Senator, and Chief Justice of New Hamp- 



44 Americana Ebrietatis 

shire, sailed from Boston for Princeton Col- 
lege September 10, 1751. In his diary he 
states his outfit. 

5 qts West India rum 5 176 

1 qr. lb. Tea, 12 

1 doz. fowls, 2 10 

2 lbs. loaf sugar, 16 
1 doz-8 lemons, 1 9 

3 lbs. butter, 12 

In a book published in 1764 describing 
student life at Princeton, it is stated that 
"the general table drink is beer or cider." 

Washington Irving, in Salmagundi, de- 
scribed seeing two students at the tavern at 
Princeton who got drunk and cursed the 
professors. Madison was a poler at Prince- 
ton, and although the five o'clock horn was 
a sovereign preventive of midnight revelry, 
Madison was occasionally found around the 
blazing logs of the Nassau Inn, when tank- 
ards of ale and puffs at the long stemmed 
pipes punctuated the students' songs. 

James Buchanan at Dickinson was the 
typical bad boy. Immorality was rampant 
among the students, sobriety and books were 
ridiculed. Buchanan became a leader in 



Schools and Colleges 45 

debauchery, although his physique enabled 
him at the same time to maintain a high 
rank in scholarship. The faculty chose him 
as a scapegoat, and he was expelled. 

Benny Havens, the hero of the West Point 
song, for many years sold liquor illicitly to 
the cadets. The foundation of Vassar Col- 
lege was the fortune acquired by Matthew 
Vassar as a brewer. 



CHAPTER IV 

Bench and Bar 

The field which then lay before the 
ablest lawyers was far less extensive and far 
less lucrative than at present. Thousands of 
cases now arise which could not then have 
possibly arisen. No wealthy corporations 
existed, expending each year in lawyers' fees 
enough money to have paid the taxes of the 
four colonies of New England. Patent law 
and railroad law, the business of banks and 
insurance companies, express companies, 
telegraph companies, and steamships, have 
given rise to legal questions of which neither 
Parsons, nor Tudor, nor Dexter had any 
conception whatever. A fee of $20,000 was 
unknown ; a suit involving $50,000,000 was 
unheard of. Yet the profession was not ill- 
paid and offered many incentives to bright 
young men. The law student of that day 
usually began by offering his services to 



Bench and Bar 47 

some lawyer of note, and if they were ac- 
cepted he paid a fee of a hundred dollars, 
and began to read law books and copy briefs. 
In the course of two years he was expected to 
have become familiar with Coke on Little- 
ton, with Wood's Institutes of Civil Law, 
with Piggot on Conveyances, with Burns's 
Justice of the Peace, with Hawkin's Pleas 
of the Crown, with Salkeld's Reports, with 
Lillie's Abridgements, and with some work 
on chancery practice and some work on what 
would now be called international law. 
This accomplished, his patron would take 
him into court, seat him at the lawyers' table, 
whisper to the gentlemen present, and with 
their consent would rise and ask leave of the 
court to present a young man for the oath of 
an attorney. The court would ask if the bar 
consented. The lawyers would then bow. 
The patron would vouch for the morals and 
learning of his young friend, and the oath 
would be administered by the clerk. This 
done, the new attorney would be introduced 
to the bar and carried off to the nearest tav- 
ern where health and prosperity would be 
drunk to him in bumpers of strong punch. 



48 Americana Ebrietatis 

Thaddeus Stevens has left an amusing ac- 
count of his brief connection, about 1820, 
with the Maryland bar. The examination 
took place in the evening before the judge 
and the bar committee. His honor informed 
Stevens that there was one indispensable 
requisite to the examination. "There must 
be two bottles of Madeira on the table and 
the applicant must order it in." Stevens 
complied with the condition, and, after the 
wine had been disposed of, one of the com- 
mittee asked the applicant what books he 
had read. He replied, "Blackstone, Coke 
upon Littleton, a work on Pleading, and 
Gilbert on Evidence" He was then asked 
two or three questions, the last of which re- 
lated to the difference between executory 
devises and a contingent remainder. A sat- 
isfactory answer to this question led his 
honor again to intervene. "Gentlemen," 
said the judge, "you see the young man is 
all right. I will give him a certificate." 
But before the certificate was delivered, the 
candidate was informed that usage required 
that the ceremony should terminate in the 
same way it had opened, and that two more 



Bench and Bar 49 

bottles must be produced. Stevens very will- 
ingly complied with this requirement and 
was made a member of the bar. 

With such a bar the courts were rude and 
primitive. The courts sat often times in 
taverns, where the tedium of business was 
relieved by glasses of grog, while the judge's 
decisions were not put on record, but were 
simply shouted by the crier from the inn 
door at the nearest market place. In North 
Carolina the laws were not printed for a 
long time but only read aloud in the market 
place, and the courts and legislature met in 
private houses and taverns. 

Probably the best type of the judges pro- 
duced by this system was old Chief Justice 
Marshall, who occupied the highest seat in 
the Supreme Court of the United States for 
35 years. His decisions were recorded and 
will be the noblest monument a man could 
have or wish. In reference to two of them, 
Judge Story says: "If all the acts of his 
judicial life or arguments had perished, his 
luminous judgments on these occasions 
would give an enviable immortality to his 
name." Judge Story said of the mode of life 



50 Americana Ebrietatis 

of the judges at these general terms of the 
court: 

"Our intercourse is perfectly familiar and 
unrestrained, and our social hours, when un- 
disturbed with the labors of law, are passed 
in gay and frank conversation, which at 
once enlivens and instructs. We take no 
part in Washington society. We dine once 
a year with the President, and that is all. 
On other days we dine together, and discuss 
at table the questions which are argued be- 
fore us. We are great ascetics and even 
deny ourselves wine except in wet weather. 
What I say about the wine gives you our 
rule; but it does sometimes happen that the 
Chief Justice will say to me, when the cloth 
is removed, 'Brother Story, step to the win- 
dow and see if it does not look like rain.' 
And if I tell him the sun is shining brightly, 
Justice Marshall will sometimes reply, 'All 
the better, for our jurisdiction extends over 
so large a territory that the doctrine of 
chances makes it certain that it must be rain- 
ing somewhere. ' The Chief was brought up 
on Federalism and Madeira, and he is not 
the man to outgrow his early prejudices. 



Bench and Bar 51 

The best Madeira was that labelled 'The Su- 
preme Court/ as their Honors, the Justices, 
used to make a direct importation every 
year, and sip it as they consulted over the 
cases before them every day after dinner, 
when the cloth had been removed." 

Returning to lawyers, Henry Clay was 
extremely convivial, keenly enjoying the so- 
ciety of his friends. He was fastidious in 
his tastes though far from being an epicure. 
He indulged moderately in wine, took snuff, 
and used tobacco freely. In earlier days he 
lost and won large sums of money at play 
but ceased the practice of gaming in conse- 
quence of censure, though he remained in- 
veterately fond of whist. 

Webster was majestic in his consumption 
of liquor as in everything else. Parton in 
his Essay speaks of seeing Webster at a pub- 
lic dinner "with a bottle of Madeira under 
his yellow waistcoat and looking like Jove." 
Schuyler Colfax frequently spoke of seeing 
Webster so drunk that he did not know what 
he was doing. Josiah Quincy describes 
Webster's grief at the burning of his house 
because of the loss of half a pipe of Madeira 



£2 Americana Ebrietatis 

wine. John Sherman in his Recollections 
describes hearing Webster deliver a speech 
at a public dinner when intoxicated. 

"In ante-bellum days, at this season of the 
year, when there was a long session, a party 
went down the Potomac every Saturday on 
the steamboat Salem to eat planked shad. 
It was chiefly composed of Senators and 
Representatives, with a few leading officials, 
some prominent citizens, and three or four 
newspaper men, who in those days never 
violated the amenities of social life by print- 
ing what they heard there. An important 
house in Georgetown would send on board 
the steamer large demijohns filled with the 
best wines and liquors, which almost every- 
body drank without stint. Going down the 
river there was a good deal of card playing 
in the upper saloon of the boat, with some 
story telling on the hurricane deck. Arriv- 
ing at the white house fishing grounds, some 
would go on shore, some would watch the 
drawing of the seine from the boat, some 
would take charge of the culinary depart- 
ment, and a few would remain at the card 
tables. The oaken planks used were about 



Bench and Bar 53 

two inches thick, fourteen inches wide, and 
two feet long. These were scalded and 
then wiped dry. A freshly caught shad was 
then taken, scaled, split open down the back, 
cleaned, washed and dried. It was then 
spread out on a plank and nailed to it with 
iron pump tacks. The plank with the fish 
on it was then stood at an angle of forty-five 
degrees before a hot wood fire and baked un- 
til it was a rich dark brown color, an atten- 
dant turning the plank every few moments 
and basting the fish with a thin mixture of 
melted butter and flour. Meanwhile an ex- 
perienced cook was frying fresh shad roe in 
a mixture of eggs and cracker dust at an- 
other fire. The planked shad, meanwhile, 
were served on the planks on which they had 
been cooked, each person having a plank and 
picking out what portion he liked best, 
breaking up his roast potato on the warm 
shad, while the roe was also served to those 
who wished for it. After the fish came 
punch and cigars and then they reembarked 
and the bows of the steamer were turned 
toward Washington. When opposite Alex- 
andria an account was taken of the liquor 



54 Americana Ebrietatis 

and wine which had been drunk, and an 
assessment was levied, which generally 
amounted to about $2.00 each. I never saw 
a person intoxicated at one of these shad 
bakes, nor heard any quarreling." 

It is said that Webster went fishing the day 
before he was to deliver his welcome to La- 
fayette, and got drunk. As he sat on the bank 
he suddenly drew from the water a large 
fish and in his majestic voice said, "Wel- 
come, illustrious stranger, to our shores." 
The next day his friends, who went fishing 
with him, were electrified to hear him begin 
his speech to Lafayette with these same 
words. 



CHAPTER V 

Church and Clergy 

The first tavern at Cambridge, Massachu- 
setts, was kept by a deacon of the church, 
afterwards, steward of Harvard college; 
and the relation of tavern and meeting house 
did not end with their simultaneous estab- 
lishment, but they continued the most friend- 
ly neighbors. Licenses to keep houses of 
entertainment were granted with the condi- 
tion that the tavern must be near the meet- 
ing-house — a keen contrast to our present 
laws prohibiting the sale of liquor within 
a certain distance of a church. Those 
who know the oldtime meeting house can 
fully comprehend the desire of the colo- 
nists to have a tavern near at hand, espe- 
cially during the winter services. Through 
autumn rains and winter frosts and snows 
the poorly built meeting house stood un- 
heated, growing more damp, more icy, 



56 Americana Ebrietatis 

more deadly, with each succeeding week. 
Women cowered shivering, half-frozen, over 
the feeble heat of a metal footstove as the 
long services dragged on and the few coals 
became ashes. Men stamped their feet and 
swung their arms in the vain effort to warm 
the blood. Gladly and cheerfully did the 
whole crowd troop from the gloomy meeting 
house to the cheerful tavern to thaw out be- 
fore the afternoon service, and to warm up 
before the ride or walk home in the late 
afternoon. It was a scandal in many a town 
that godly church members took too freely 
of tavern cheer at the nooning; the only 
wonder is that the entire congregation did 
not succumb in a body to the potent flip and 
toddy of the tavern-keeper. In mid-summer 
the hot sun beat down on the meeting house 
roof, and the burning rays poured in the un- 
shaded windows. The tap-room of the tav- 
ern and the green trees in its dooryard of- 
fered a pleasant shade to tired church-goers, 
and its well sweep afforded a grateful drink 
to those who turned not to the tap-room. 
There are ever back-sliders in every church 
community; many walked into the ordinary 



Church and Clergy 57 

door instead of up the church alley. The 
chimney seat of the inn was more comfort- 
able than the narrow seat of the "pue." The 
general court of Massachusetts passed a law 
requiring all inn-keepers within a mile of 
any meeting house to clear their houses 
"during the hours of the exercise." "Thus," 
Mr. Field says wittily, "the townsmen were 
frozen out of the tavern to be frozen in the 
meeting house." Our ancestors had no rev- 
erence for a church save as a literal meeting 
house, and it was not unusual to transform 
the house of God into a tavern. The Great 
House at Charlestown, Massachusetts, the 
official residence of Governor Winthrop, be- 
came a meeting house in 1633, and then a 
tavern, the Three Cranes, kept by Robert 
Leary and his descendants for many years. 
It was destroyed in June, 1775, in the burn- 
ing of the town. 

The first revenue relinquished by the West 
India Company to the town of New Amster- 
dam was the excise on wine, beer, and spir- 
its, and the sole condition made by Stuy- 
vesant on its surrender was as to its applica- 
tion, that the salaries of the Dominies should 



58 Americana Ebrietatis 

be paid from it. For a year beginning No- 
vember, 1661, the burghers of Esopus paid 
a tax on liquor, the proceeds of which were 
used to build a parsonage for the minister. 
St. Philip's church in Charleston, South 
Carolina, was originally built by a tax of 
two pence a gallon on spirits imported in 
1670. Between 1743 and 1750 the public 
revenues of South Carolina were all raised 
by three per cent duties on liquors, wines, 
sugar, molasses, slaves, and imported dry 
goods, and produced about forty-five hun- 
dred pounds, of which one thousand pounds 
were devoted to paying the salaries of ten 
ministers. The dedication of St. Michael's 
church in Charleston, South Carolina, was 
followed by a great dinner, at which a large 
amount of liquor was consumed. 

Under such circumstances it could not be 
expected that the clergy would be much 
troubled with scruples on the use of liquor, 
and the evidence is that they were not. We 
must bear in mind that the use of liquors 
was universal in those days. "Ordination 
Day" was almost as great a day for the tav- 
ern as for the meeting house. The visiting 



Church and Clergy 59 

ministers who came to assist at the religious 
service of ordination of a new minister were 
usually entertained at the tavern. Often a 
specially good beer was brewed called "or- 
dination beer," and in Connecticut an "or- 
dination ball" was given at the tavern — 
this with the sanction of the parsons. The 
bills for entertaining the visitors for the din- 
ner and lodging at the local taverns are in 
many cases preserved. One of the most 
characteristic was at a Hartford ordination. 
It runs : 

To keeping ministers, £ s. d. 

2 mugs toddy, 2 4 
5 Segars, 5 10 
1 pint wine, 3 9 

3 Lodgings, 9 

3 Bitters, 9 

3 Breakfasts, 3 6 

15 Boles punch, 1 10 

24 Dinners, 1 16 

1 1 bottles wine, 3 6 

5 Mugs flip, 5 10 

5 Boles Punch, 6 

3 Boles Toddy, 3 6 

The bill is endorsed with unconscious hu- 
mor, "This is all paid for except the Min- 
ister's Rum." 



60 Americana Ebrietatis 

Here is another ordination bill: 

30 Boles of Punch before the People went 

to meeting. 
10 bottles of wine before they went to meet- 
ing. 
44 Bowles of Punch while at dinner. 
18 bottles of wine. 
8 Bowles of Brandy. 

Cherry rum [quantity not mentioned]. 

When the fathers met in synod at Cam- 
bridge in 1648, there was a liquor bill in 
connection with the expense of the meeting. 
At the ordination of Edwin Jackson in Wo- 
burn, 1729, the town paid for six and one- 
half barrels of cider, 25 gallons of wine, 2 
gallons of brandy, 4 gallons of rum. 

In the South the clergy were addicted to 
horse racing, gambling, and drunken revels. 
One of them was for many years president of 
a Jockey Club. They encouraged among 
the people the celebration of the sacrament 
of baptism with music and dancing in which 
the clergymen took part, a custom which 
shows signs of returning in England. One 
fought a duel in a churchyard, another 
thrashed his vestry. One parson preached 
in his stocking feet, one in his study coat, 



Church and Clergy 6l 

and one ran a distillery. Many of them were 
appointed by the British government and 
by the Bishop of London and they were af- 
fected by the irreligious listlessness and low 
moral tone of the English church in the 
eighteenth century. 

Alexander Graydon tells us that in his 
early days any jockeying, fiddling, wine-bib- 
bing clergyman not over-scrupulous about 
stealing sermons was currently known as "a 
Maryland Parson." The Maryland clergy 
are said to have been more vicious than those 
of Virginia. They raced horses, hunted 
foxes, drank, gambled, joined in every 
amusement of the planters and would extort 
marriage fees from the poor by breaking off 
in the middle of the service and refusing to 
go on until paid. 

One Dr. Beatty was acting as chaplain 
to an army of five hundred men led by 
Franklin to defend the frontier against the 
French and Indians after the burning of 
the Moravian mission at Gnadenhutten, 
Pennsylvania. "Dr. Beatty complained to 
me," says Franklin, "that the men did not 
generally attend his prayers and exhorta- 



62 Americana Ebrietatis 

tions. When they were enlisted, they were 
promised, besides hay and provisions, a gill 
of rum a day, which was punctually served 
out to them, half in the morning, and the 
other half in the evening; and I observed 
they were as punctual in attending to receiv- 
ing it; upon which I said to Mr. Beatty, 'It 
is perhaps below the dignity of your profes- 
sion to act as steward of the rum, but if you 
were to deal it out, and only just after pray- 
ers you would have them all about you.' " 
The shrewd suggestion was adopted by Dr. 
Beatty, and the philosophic Franklin says 
"Never were prayers more generally and 
punctually attended; so that I thought this 
method preferable to the punishment inflict- 
ed by some military laws for non-attendance 
at divine service." 

This chapter may well be concluded with 
the famous and oft quoted letter of Cotton 
Mather to John Higginson : 

"September ye 15, 1682. 
"To ye Aged and Beloved Mr. John Hig- 
ginson : 

"There is now at sea a ship called the 
Welcome, which has on board an hundred 



Church and Clergy 63 

or more of the heretics and malignants 
called Quakers, with W. Perm, who is the 
chief scamp, at the head of them. 

"The general court has accordingly given 
secret orders to Master Malachi Huscott, of 
the brig Porpoise, to waylay the said Wel- 
come, slyly, as near the Cape of Cod as may 
be, and make captive the said Penn and his 
ungodly crew, so that the Lord may be glori- 
fied, and not mocked on the soil of this new 
country with the heathen worship of these 
people. Much spoil can be made by selling 
the whole lot to Barbadoes, where slaves 
fetch good prices in rum and sugar, and we 
shall not only do the Lord great service by 
punishing the wicked, but we shall make 
great good for his minister and people. 

"Master Huscott feels hopeful, and I will 
set down the news when the ship comes back. 
"Yours in ye bowels of Christ, 

"Cotton Mather." 



CHAPTER VI 

Relation of George Washington to the 
Liquor Traffiic 

In approaching the study of the character 
of Washington a writer should always re- 
member the veneration in which his mem- 
ory is justly held among Americans. The 
reader should remember that public senti- 
ment was then at a very low ebb with regard 
to the liquor traffic and neither the drinker 
nor seller was discredited by his neighbors 
as he is today. 

The use of liquor played an important 
part in the life of a Virginia planter a cen- 
tury and a half ago. At all the cross-roads 
and court-houses there sprang up taverns or 
ordinaries, and in these the men of a neigh- 
borhood would gather and over a bowl of 
punch or a bottle of wine, the expense of 
which they clubbed to share, would spend 
their evenings. Into this life Washington 



George Washington 65 

eagerly entered. As a mere lad his ledger 
records expenditures: 

"By a club in Arrack at Mr. Gordon's 2/6; 
Club of a bottle of Rhenish at Mitchel's 

i/3; 
To part of the club at Port Royal 1/; 
To cash in part for a bowl of fruit punch 

1/7-1/2." 

When Governor Dinwiddie sent Wash- 
ington in 1753 with a letter to M. de St. 
Pierre, the French commander, to remon- 
strate against the erection of French forts, 
one of the incidents of his journey was a 
complimentary visit to the Indian queen, 
Aliquippa, who resided at the confluence of 
the Monongahela and Youghiogany rivers, 
in the southeastern part of Alleghany coun- 
ty, Pennsylvania. She had complained of 
his neglect in not calling upon her when on 
his outward journey. Young Washington 
explained the circumstances that prevented 
him, and with an apology he gave her a 
coat and a bottle of rum. The latter, Wash- 
ington wrote, "was thought the much better 
present of the two," and harmony of feeling 
was restored. Aliquippa, who was a woman 



66 Americana Ebrietatis 

of great energy and had performed some 
brave deeds, was held in deep respect, 
amounting almost to reverence, by the In- 
dians in western Pennsylvania. 

In 1766 Washington shipped an unruly 
negro to the West Indies and wrote the cap- 
tain of the vessel as follows : 

"With this letter comes a negro (Tom) 
which I beg the favor of you to sell in any of 
the islands you may go to, for whatever he 
will fetch, and bring me in return for him 

One hhd of best molasses 

One ditto of best rum 

One barrel of lymes, if good and cheap 

One pot of tamarinds, containing about 
10 lbs. 

Two small ditto of mixed sweetmeats, 
about 5 lbs each. 

And the residue, much or little in good 
old spirits." 

Shortly before this time Washington was 
a candidate for the legislature. There was 
then a Virginia statute forbidding treating 
the voters, or bribery at elections, and de- 
laring illegal all elections thus obtained, yet 
the following is the bill of the liquors Wash- 



George Washington 67 

ington furnished the voters of Frederick: 

40 gallons of Rum punch a 3/6 

per gain. 7.00 

15 gallons of wine a 10 per gain 7. 10 
Dinner for your friends 3 . 00 

13^ gallons of wine a 10/ 6.15 

13 gallons of beer a 1/3 4"4/ 2 

8 qts Cider Royal a 1/6 . 16-3 

Punch 3-9 

30 galls strong beer a 8d. per gall 1-0 
26 gall, best Barbadoes rum 5/ 6.10 
12 lbs. S Fefd. Sugar 1/6 .18-9 

3 galls & 3 qts of beer 1/ per gall. 3-9 
10 bowls of punch 2/6 each 1 .50 
9 half pints of rum 7^ d. each 5-7-1 
1 pint of wine 1-6 

After the election was over, Washington 
wrote Wood that "I hope no exception was 
taken to any that voted against me, but that 
all were alike treated, and all had enough. 
My only fear is that you spent with too spar- 
ing a hand." It is hardly necessary to say 
that such methods reversed the former elec- 
tion: Washington secured three hundred 
and ten votes, and Swearington received 
forty-five. From this time until he took 
command of the army Washington was a 
burgess. Once again he was elected from 



i 



68 Americana Ebrietatis 

Frederick county, and then, in 1765, he 
stood for Fairfax, in which Mount Vernon 
was located. Here he received 208 votes, 
his colleague getting 148, and in the elec- 
tion of 1768 he received 185, and his col- 
league only 142. Washington spent between 
£40 and £75 at each of these elections, and 
usually gave a ball to the voters on the 
night he was chosen. Some of the miscel- 
laneous election expenses noted in his ledger 
are: 

54 galls of strong beer 

52 dro. of Ale 

£1. o. o. to Mr. John Muir for his fiddler, 

For cakes at the election £7. 1 1. 1. 

Bushrod Washington, made a real estate 
investment that did not suit his uncle, and 
Washington wrote him as follows : 

"Now let me ask you what your views 
were in purchasing a Lott in a place which, 
I presume, originated with and will end in 
two or three Gin shops, which probably will 
exist no longer than they serve to ruin the 
proprietors, and those who make the most 
frequent applications to them." 

He expressed an adverse opinion of the 
liquor business at one time, somewhat in the 



George Washington 69 

same line, in a contract he made with a 
plantation overseer: 

"And whereas, there are a number of 
whiskey stills very contiguous to the said 
Plantations, and many idle, drunken and dis- 
solute people continually resorting to the 
same, priding themselves in debauching so- 
ber and well-inclined persons, the said Edd 
Violet doth promise as well for his own sake 
as his employers to avoid them as he ought." 

To the contrary, in hiring a gardener it 
was agreed as part of the compensation that 
the man should have "four dollars at Christ- 
mas with which he may be drunk for four 
days and nights ; two dollars at Easter to ef- 
fect the same purpose; two dollars at Whit- 
suntide to be drunk for two days ; a dram in 
the morning, and a drink of grog at dinner 
at noon." 

At Valley Forge he complained to Con- 
gress of the mortifications they (even the 
general officers) must suffer, when they can- 
not invite a French officer, a visiting friend, 
or a traveling acquaintance, to a better re- 
past than stinking whiskey (and not always 
that) and a bit of beef without vegetables. 



yo Americana Ebrietatis 

In the New York State Library at Albany- 
is a statement in Washington's handwriting 
of his household expenses for three months 
at the beginning of his first term as Presi- 
dent, from May 24 to August 24, 1789; the 
total expense for that time was £741 and 9 
shillings, of which the following items were 
for liquor: 

Pounds Shillings Pence 



Madeira 


43 


18 


Claret 


21 


11 


Champaign 


18 




Van de Graves 






Cherry 


2 


5 


Arack 


2 


16 


Spirits 


12 




Brandy 


6 


6 


Cordials 


5 


6 


Porter 


16 


8 


Beer 


34 


14 


Cider 


4 


10 



In the same library is a memorandum of 
Washington's opinion of his general officers, 
prepared in the winter of 1791-2. From 
this it seems that he considered the drinking 
habit of his subordinates, even at that time, 
in appointing a successor to General Arthur 



George Washington 71 

St. Clair, who had just then been defeated 

by the Indians : 

"Majr General (By Brevet) Wayne. 

"More active and enterprising than ju- 
dicious no economist it is feared — open to 
flattery — vain — easily imposed upon and 
liable to be drawn into scrapes. Too indul- 
gent [the effect perhaps of some of the 
causes just mentioned] to his officers and 
men. Whether sober — or a little addicted 
to the bottle, I know not. 
"Majr General (By Brevet) Weedon. 

"Not supposed to be an officer of much re- 
source, though not deficient of a competent 
share of understanding — rather addicted to 
ease and pleasure, and no enemy it is said to 
the bottle — never has had his name brot 
forward on this account. 
"Major General (By Brevet) Hand. 

"A sensible and judicious man, his integ- 
rity unimpeached, and was esteemed a pret- 
ty good officer. But if I recollect rightly 
not a very active one. He has never been 
charged with intemperance to my knowl- 
edge. His name has rarely been mentioned 



72 Americana Ebrietatis 

under the present difficulty of choosing an 
officer to command, but this may, in a great 
measure be owing to his being at a distance. 
"Majr General (By Brevet) Scott. 

"Brave and means well; but is an officer 
of inadequate abilities for extreme com- 
mand, and by report is addicted to drinking." 

In 1795, when the United States passed an 
excise law, distilling became particularly 
profitable, and a still was set up on his plan- 
tation. In this whiskey was made from 
"rye" chiefly, and Indian corn in a certain 
proportion, and this not merely used much 
of the estate's product of those two grains, 
but quantities were purchased from else- 
where. In 1798 the profit from the distillery 
was three hundred and forty-four pounds, 
twelve shillings, and seven and three-quar- 
ter pence, with a stock carried over of seven 
hundred and fifty-five and one-quarter gal- 
lons ; but this was the most successful year. 
Cider, too, was made in large quantities. 

Washington resigned his command De- 
cember 23, 1783, and went back to his estate, 
which had suffered from his eight years' ab- 
sence. To his friends he offered unpreten- 



George Washington 73 

tious hospitality. "My manner of living is 
plain," he said, "a glass of wine and a bit of 
mutton are always ready and such as will be 
content to partake of them are always 'wel- 
come." 

At Washington's official dinners ordinari- 
ly a boiled leg of mutton was served, fol- 
lowed by a glass of wine. The silver service 
was massive, being valued at $30,000, but 
the menu was very simple. On a great oc- 
casion it included soup, fish roasted and 
boiled, meats, fowls, and so on, and for des- 
sert, apple pies, puddings^ ice cream, jelly, 
and fruit. After the cloth had been re- 
moved the President filled his glass and 
drank the health by name of each one pres- 
ent. 

Samuel Stearns, who was a frequent vis- 
itor to Mount Vernon, thus described the 
habits of Washington : 

"He is very regular, temperate and indus- 
trious; rises in winter and summer at the 
dawn of day; generally reads or writes some 
time before breakfast; breakfasts about 
seven o'clock on three small Indian hoe 
cakes, and as many dishes of tea, and often 



74 Americana Ebrietatis 

rides immediately to his different farms, and 
remains with his laborers until a little after 
two o'clock, then returns and dresses. At 
three he dines, commonly on a single dish, 
and drinks from half a pint to a pint of 
Madeira wine. This with one small glass 
of punch, a draught of beer, and two dishes 
of tea (which he takes half an hour before 
the setting of the sun) constitutes his whole 
sustenance until the next day. But his table 
is always furnished with elegance and exu- 
berance; and whether he has company or 
not, he remains at the table an hour in famil- 
iar conversation, then every one is called 
upon to give some absent friend a toast. 
After he has dined, he applies himself to 
business, and about nine retires to rest; but 
when he has company he attends politely 
upon them till they wish to withdraw." 

Relation of Other Prominent Americans to 
the Liquor Traffic 

Among the early prominent American 
characters the total abstainer was a rare ar- 
ticle, and the prohibitionist almost unknown. 
Governor John Winthrop was probably a 



Prominent Americans 75 

total abstainer, and the romantic character 
of John Smith seems quite clear from the 
drinking habits of the period. "Never was 
warrior known," says an old writer, "from 
debts and dice and oaths so free," and his 
own words as to the object of life show a 
loftiness of purpose almost unknown among 
his contemporaries, and should be preserved 
for the example they furnish to posterity. 
"Seeing we are not born for ourselves but 
each to help the other, and our abilities are 
much alike at the hour of our birth and the 
minute of our death ; seeing our good deeds 
and our bad by faith in Christ's merits is all 
we have to carry our souls to heaven or hell ; 
seeing honor is our lives' ambition and our 
ambition after death to have an honorable 
memory of our life ; and seeing by no means 
we would be abated of the dignities and 
glories of our predecessors let us imitate 
their virtues so as to be worthily their suc- 
cessors." So wrote the man of whom old 
Thomas Fuller said, "He had a prince's 
heart in a beggar's purse," and to whom one 
of his comrades, a survivor of the starving 
time, paid this touching tribute : "Thus we 



76 Americana Ebrietatis 

lost him that in all our proceedings made 
justice his first guide — ever hating baseness, 
sloth, pride and indignity more than any 
dangers; that never allowed himself more 
than his soldiers with him ; that upon no oc- 
casion would he send them where he would 
not go himself ; that would never see us want 
what he either had or could by any means 
get us ; that would rather want than borrow 
or starve than not pay; that loved actions 
more than words and hated falsehood and 
covetousness worse than death; whose ad- 
ventures were our lives and whose loss our 
deaths." 

But these are two of the few oases in the 
dreary desert of early American drunken- 
ness. Most prominent men of the time 
drank to excess. The early colonial gran- 
dees furnish a number of quaint pictures. 
Governor William Cosby, of New York, 
was admitted to the Humdrum Club on Jan- 
uary 24, 1733, over many bowls of punch 
made from peculiar and valuable receipts, 
known only to the members of the club, 
which was potent in its effects even over a 
well seasoned veteran like the late Governor 



Prominent Americans 77 

of Minorca. Sir Danvers Osborne, another 
governor, committed suicide. The colony 
of New York had been treated to a variety 
of rulers since the English had taken pos- 
session of the Dutch colony. They were en- 
dowed with every vice known. They were 
fortunately spared the dominion of a mad- 
man who succeeded a dipsomaniac in the 
chief office of the province. Governor 
Clinton immured himself in the fort and 
spent his time with his bottle and a little 
trifling circle who lived on his bounty. Gov- 
ernor Hunter was a man of violent passion. 
After he had had one of his fits an Indian 
said to an officer, "The governor is drunk." 
"No," said the officer, "he never drinks any 
strong liquor." The brave replied, "I do 
not mean he is drunk with rum, he was born 
drunk." 

In 1688, in the midst of the rejoicings, the 
news came that the Queen, the second wife 
of James, had been blessed with a son, who 
became heir to the throne. The event was 
celebrated the same evening by bonfires in 
the streets and a feast at the city hall. At 
the latter, Mayor Van Courtlandt became 



jS Americana Ebrietatis 

so hilarious, that he made a burnt sacrifice 
to his loyalty of his hat and periwig, waving 
the burning victims over the banquet table 
on the point of his straight sword. And 
when, in March, 1691, Governor Slough ter 
arrived, and Leisler sent him a letter loyally 
tendering to him the fort and province, that 
functionary, under the influence of the aris- 
tocratic leaders, answered it by sending an 
officer to arrest the "usurper" and Mil- 
borne and six of the "inferior insurgents" on 
a charge of high treason. They were taken 
to prison, and when they were arraigned, 
the two principal offenders, denying the au- 
thority of the court, refused to plead, and 
appealed to the King. They were con- 
demned and sentenced to death, but Slough- 
ter, who in his sober moments was just and 
honest, refused to sign the death warrant 
until he should hear from the King. The 
implacable enemies of the "usurper," deter- 
mined on causing his destruction, invited the 
governor to a dinner party on Staten Island 
on a bright day in May. One of them car- 
ried to the banquet a legally drawn death 
warrant, and when the governor had been 



Prominent Americans 79 

made stupid with liquor, he was induced to 
sign the fatal paper. It was sent to the city 
that evening, and on the following morning 
Leisler and Milborne were summoned to 
prepare for execution. Leisler sent for his 
wife, Alice, and their older children, and 
after a sorrowful parting with them, he and 
his son-in-law were led to the gallows in a 
drenching rain. They confessed their er- 
rors of judgment but denied all intentional 
wrongdoing. The blamelessness of their 
lives confirmed their declarations of inno- 
cence. Before Sloughter was permitted to 
recover from his debauch, they were hanged. 
It was foul murder. The governor was tor- 
tured with remorse for his act, and died of 
delirium tremens three months afterward. 
When William Penn, in 1682, drew up 
his code of laws for Pennsylvania he made 
the drinking of healths and the selling of 
liquor to Indians crimes. His opinion as to 
drinking healths must have changed between 
1682 and 1 7 10 when Dean Swift met Penn 
and passed a lively evening. He writes 
Stella, "We sat two hours drinking as good 
wine as you do," and it is the strongest proof 



80 Americana Ebrietatis 

of Perm's lovableness that after drinking 
good wine with him for two hours that 
night, Swift the next morning has no word 
of dispraise for his companion. 

One of the oddest characters in early Vir- 
ginia history was Dr. John Pott, who was at 
one time governor of Virginia, and is de- 
scribed as a Master of Arts, well practiced 
in chirurgery and physic and expert also in 
distilling waters, besides many other ingeni- 
ous devices. It seems he was also very fond 
of tasting distilled waters, and at times was 
more of a boon companion than quite com- 
ported with his dignity, especially after he 
had come to be governor. A letter of George 
Sandys says of Dr. Pott: "At first he kept 
too much company with his inferiors who 
hung upon him while his good liquor last- 
ed." After Harvey's arrival Ex-Governor 
Pott was held to answer two charges. One 
was for having abused the power entrusted 
to him by pardoning a culprit who had been 
convicted of wilful murder, the other was 
for stealing cattle. The first charge was a 
common notoriety; on the second Doctor 
Pott was tried by a jury and found guilty. 



Prominent Americans 81 

The ex-governor was not a pardoner of fel- 
ony but was a felon himself. The affair 
reads like a scene in comic opera. Some re- 
luctance was felt about inflicting vulgar pun- 
ishment upon an educated man of good so- 
cial position, so he was not sent to jail but 
confined in his own house, while Sir John 
Harvey wrote to the King for instructions in 
the matter. He informed the King that 
Doctor Pott was by far the best physician in 
the colony and indeed the only one skilled in 
epidemics and recommended that he should 
be pardoned. Accordingly the doctor was 
set free and forthwith resumed his practice. 
No one was better disposed toward a mod- 
erate conviviality than Franklin himself. 
In that old house on High street where he 
lived and died there remains now in the pos- 
session of the Pennsylvania Historical So- 
ciety that delightful punch-keg which rolled 
so easily from guest to guest, and which car- 
ried the generous liquor generously around 
Franklin's board. A curious little keg this, 
pretty, portly, and altogether unlike other 
punch-bowls left us from colonial days. 
Among the china was a fine large jug for 



82 Americana Ebrietatis 

beer, to stand in the cooler. Franklin's wife 
was frugal, and it pleased him to set aside 
her customary frugality on the blithesome 
occasions when the punch-keg went rolling 
round. 

In 1768, when the advent of the new gov- 
ernor made necessary the election of a new 
House of Burgesses, Jefferson already 
craved the opportunity to take an active 
part in affairs, and at once offered him- 
self as a candidate for Albemarle coun- 
ty. He kept open house, distributed lim- 
itless punch, stood by the polls politely 
bowing to every voter who named him 
according to the Virginia fashion of the 
day, and had the good fortune, by these mer- 
itorious efforts, to win success. In 1794 Jef- 
ferson very nearly sympathized with the 
Whiskey Rebellion. He called the excise 
law an infernal one. In his gloomy views 
of the War of 181 2 he asks what Virginia 
can raise, and answers his question thus: 
"Tobacco? It is not worth the pipe it is 
smoked in. Some say whiskey, but all man- 
kind must become drunkards to consume it." 
While Chastellux, in his travels, tells of dis- 
cussing a bowl of punch with Jefferson at 



Prominent Americans 83 

Monticello, Jefferson never seems to have 
drunk ardent spirits or strong wine, and in 
his last illness his physician could not in- 
duce him to take brandy strong enough to 
benefit him. 

While Hamilton favored the whiskey tax 
and caused the Whiskey Rebellion thereby, 
he nevertheless was in favor of temperance, 
as is shown by the circulars he issued to the 
army. 

In his early youth Andrew Jackson was 
gay, careless, rollicking, fond of drinking, 
horse-racing, cock-fighting, and all kinds of 
mischief; his habits moderated in later years 
and in his old age Jackson became religious. 

The son of Dolly Madison by her first 
marriage, Payne Todd, was a continual 
financial burden to her even after the death 
of President Madison, and by his dissipation 
broke his mother's heart, embittered her old 
age, and ruined her financially as if to show 
that even the wife of the President was not 
exempt from the burdens of any mother of a 
drunkard. When Tyler became President 
he lived precisely as he had done on his Vir- 
ginia plantation. He invariably invited vis- 
itors to visit the family dining-room, and 



84 Americana Ebrietatis 

"take something," from a sideboard well 
garnished with decanters of ardent spirits 
and wine, with a bowl of juleps in the sum- 
mer, and of eggnog in the winter. 

One of the most picturesque figures of 
this period was General Sam Houston, who 
was a prominent figure at Washington dur- 
ing the Taylor administration. Because of 
trouble with his wife he resigned the gov- 
ernorship of Tennessee, went into the Chero- 
kee country, adopted the Indian costume 
and became an Indian trader and so dissi- 
pated that his Indian name was "Big- 
drunk." He wore a waistcoat made from 
the skin of a panther dressed with the hair 
on, and was conspicuous in the Senate for 
whittling soft pine sticks, which were pro- 
vided him by the seargeant-at-arms. He 
was the best customer supplied from his own 
whiskey barrel, until one day after a pro- 
longed debauch he heard that the Mexicans 
had taken up arms against their revolted 
province. He cast off his Indian attire, 
dressed like a white man, and never touched 
a drop of any intoxicating beverage after- 
wards. 



CHAPTER VII 

The Slave Trade 

In no branch of history is the culpability 
of the liquor traffic more thoroughly shown 
than in its relation to the slave trade. The 
making of rum aided and almost supported 
the slave trade in this country. The poor 
negroes were bought on the coast of Africa 
by New England sea captains and paid for 
with barrels of New England rum. These 
slaves were then carried on slave ships to the 
West Indies and sold at a large profit to 
planters and slave dealers for a cargo of 
molasses. This was brought to New Eng- 
land, distilled into rum, and sent off to Af- 
rica; thus the circle of molasses, slaves, and 
rum was completed. 

In 1708 the West Indies afforded the 
great demand for negroes; they also fur- 
nished the raw material supplying the man- 
ufacture of the main merchandise which the 



86 Americana Ebrietatis 

thirsty Gold Coast drank up in barter for 
its poor, banished children. Governor Hop- 
kins stated that for more than thirty years 
prior to 1764 Rhode Island sent to the Coast 
annually eighteen vessels carrying 1,800 
hogsheads of rum. It displaced French 
brandies in the trade of the Coast after 1723. 
The commerce in rum and slaves afforded 
about £40,000 per annum for remittance 
from Rhode Island to Great Britain. Mo- 
lasses and poor sugar, distilled in Boston 
and more especially in Newport into rum, 
made the staple export to Africa. Some ob- 
tained gallon for gallon of molasses, but the 
average was 96 to 100. Newport had twen- 
ty-two still houses. Boston had the best ex- 
ample, owned by a Mr. Childs. The cost of 
distilling was five and a half pence per gal- 
lon. Cisterns and vats cost fourteen to six- 
teen shillings per one hundred gallons, in 
1735, not including lumber. The quantity 
of rum distilled was enormous, and in 1750 
it was estimated that Massachusetts alone 
consumed more than 15,000 hogsheads of 
molasses for this purpose. The average 
price of molasses in the West Indies was 



The Slave Trade 87 

thirteen or fourteen pence per gallon. The 
consumption of rum in the fisheries and 
lumbering and ship-building districts was 
large. 

There was no article of merchandise com- 
parable to rum on the African coast. Our 
forefathers' instincts were neither moral nor 
immoral ; they were simply economic. They 
had tried dry-goods, and Africa rejected 
them in favor of the wet. Captain George 
Scott writes lamenting the purchasing of 
dry-goods and says, "had we laid out two 
thousand pounds in rum, bread and flour, it 
would purchase more in value than all our 
dry-goods." 

The cargo of the Caesar, out-bound, was : 
eighty-two barrels, six hogsheads and six 
tierces of New England rum; thirty-three 
barrels of best Jamaica spirits; thirty-three 
barrels of Barbadoes rum; twenty-five pairs 
of pistols; two casks of musket-balls; one 
chest of hand arms; twenty-five cutlasses. 
The return cargo was: in the hold on board 
the scow Caesar, one hundred and fifty- 
three adult slaves, and two children. 

The ships were light of draught and built 



88 Americana Ebrietatis 

for speed. The captain and the crew were 
men little troubled with scruples touching 
the work they had to do. Once off the 
coast of Mozambique or Guinea, the car- 
go was rapidly made up. If a band of 
blacks, moved by curiosity, came round 
the vessel in a skiff, they were sure to be 
lured on board, ironed, and hurried into 
the hold. If a boat's crew went on shore, 
they came back dragging some wretched 
man between them. For rum the native 
princes gladly sold prisoners that their sub- 
jects made in war. When every available 
inch of space had been filled, the slaver 
turned westward and made for some south- 
ern port. The coast line had scarcely dis- 
appeared from view when the hatches were 
taken off and the terrors of the voyage 
began. Every fine day at sunrise the slaves 
were driven on deck. Such as were noisy 
had the thumb-screws put on. Such as 
were hard to manage were chained in 
pairs by the arms, or the ankles, or the 
necks. At the first sign of insurrection the 
leaders were shot down and cast into the sea. 
Their food was salt pork and beans. Their 



The Southern Planter 89 

sole exercise was dancing and capering 
about the deck. This they were made to do. 
If any refused the cat-o'-nine-tails or the 
rope's end was vigorously applied. When 
the sun set the whole band went below. The 
transactions of one of these slavers are pre- 
served in the history of New Bedford and 
make interesting reading for those who 
would hold up the Puritan as innocent of 
the transgression which stains the character 
of the Cavalier. 

Dr. 
The natives of Annamboe. 
1770 

To one hhds. of rum 1 10 

" " " 130 

" " " 105 

11 " " 108 

Cr. 

Per contra. 

Apr. 22. By one woman slave no 

May 1. " " prime woman slave 130 

2. " " boy slave 4 ft. 1 in. 105 

" 7- " " " " 4 ft. 3 in. 108 

The Southern Planter 

Liquor and slavery combined produced 
the Southern planter, whose life has often 



Apr. 22. 


To 


on 


May 1. 
" 2. 


tt 


u 


11 7. 


u 


tt 



90 Americana Ebrietatis 

been described by various writers. When 
Yeardley assumed control of affairs in Vir- 
ginia, the Company required that there 
should be inserted in all formal grants of 
land a covenant that the patentees should 
not apply themselves either wholly or prin- 
cipally to the culture of tobacco, but should 
divide their attentions among a number of 
commodities carefully specified in each deed. 
These consisted of Indian corn, wheat, flax, 
silk-grass, and wine. Parton, in his Life of 
Jefferson, says that the Virginia planter ex- 
pended the proceeds of his tobacco in vast* 
ugly mansions, heavy furniture, costly ap- 
parel, Madeira wines, fine horses, and 
slaves. 

Another writer says : 

"The gentleman of fortune rises about 
nine o'clock. He may perhaps make an ex- 
cursion to his stables to see his horses, which 
is seldom more than fifty yards from his 
house; he returns to breakfast between nine 
and ten, which is generally tea or coffee, 
bread and butter and very thin slices of ven- 
ison, ham, or hung beef. He then lies down 



The Southern Planter 91 

on a pallet on the floor in the coolest room in 
the house in his shirt and trousers only, with 
a negro at his head and another at his feet to 
fan him and keep off the flies; between 
twelve and one he takes a bombo or toddy, a 
liquor compounded of water, sugar, rum, 
and nutmeg, which is made weak and kept 
cool ; he dines between two and three, and at 
every meal, whatever else there may be, a 
ham and greens or cabbage is always a 
standing dish. At dinner he drinks cider, 
toddy, punch, port, claret, and Madeira, 
which is generally excellent here; having 
drank some few glasses of wine after dinner 
he returns to his pallet, with his two blacks 
to fan him, and continues to drink toddy or 
sangaree all the afternoon. Between nine 
and ten in the evening he eats a light supper 
of milk, fruit, etc., and almost invariably re- 
tires to bed for the night. This is his gen- 
eral way of living in his family when he has 
no company. No doubt many differ from 
it, some in one respect and some in another, 
but more follow it than do not. Pewter cups 
and mugs were everywhere to be seen and 



92 Americana Ebrietatis 

now and then a drinking horn. There were 
in the house for the purposes of drinking a 
variety of receptacles, such as the tumbler, 
the mug, the cup, the flagon, the tankard, 
and the beaker. The cups were known by a 
number of names, such as the lignum vitae, 
the syllabub, the sack, and the dram. Many 
planters in moderate circumstances were in 
possession of a quantity of silver plate." 

MacMasters says of the Southern planter: 
"Numerous slaves and white servants attend- 
ed them in every capacity that use or osten- 
tation could suggest. On their tables were 
to be found the luxuries of the Old World 
and the New, and chief among these stood 
Madeira and rum. That the men of that 
generation drank more deeply than the men 
of this is not to be doubted." Another writer 
says : "The Maryland gentry ordered cham- 
pagne from Europe by the cask and Ma- 
deira by the pipe and dressed in the latest 
fashion." 

Betting and gambling were with drunken- 
ness and a passion for duelling and running 
in debt the chief sins of the South Carolina 
gentleman. 



The Indian Tribes 93 

The Indian Tribes 

When Gladwyn wrote to Amherst, "If 
your Excellency still intends to punish the 
Indians farther for their barbarities it may 
easily be done without any expense to the 
crown by permitting a free sale of rum 
which will destroy them more effectually 
than fire and sword," he indicated the policy 
toward the Indian tribes which has been 
steadily pursued by all civilized nations on 
the American continent except the French. 
Irving, in his Knickerbocker's History of 
New York, has stated the truth on this, as he 
often does on other matters : "Our benevo- 
lent forefathers endeavored as much as pos- 
sible to ameliorate their situation by giving 
them gin, wine and glass beads in exchange 
for their peltries, for it seemed the kind- 
hearted Dutchmen had conceived a great 
friendship for their savage neighbors; on 
account of their being pleasant men to trade 
with, and little skilled in the art of mak- 
ing a bargain." There is extant a letter 
of Ebenezer Hazard to Silas Deane of date 
February 25, 1775, in which Hazard says: 
"I am told the Committee appointed by the 



94 Americana Ebrietatis 

House to state the grievances of this Colony, 
though mostly Tories, have included all 
those complained of by Congress and men- 
tioned some new ones, particularly the de- 
struction of the Indian Trade by the Quebec 
Duty Act. You know that trade cannot be 
carried on without rum. By the Quebec 
Duty Act no rum may be sold in the Prov- 
ince but what is entered and the duty paid at 
Quebec or on Lake Champlain. The Vir- 
ginians, etc., cannot afford to carry their rum 
to these places to be entered, and consequent- 
ly can have no trade. This I am very cred- 
ibly informed is one of the grievances they 
have enumerated." 

There were but few storekeepers in Vir- 
ginia in early days who were not engaged in 
the Indian trade. Guns, ammunition, rum, 
blankets, knives, and hatchets were the ar- 
ticles in greatest demand among the tribes. 
When in the ordinary course of events a 
young American in Virginia or elsewhere 
felt himself impelled to leave the paternal 
roof he put aside his gun and fishing rod, and 
asked of his father some money, a slave, and 
a canoe. His brow grew thoughtful, and he 



The Indian Tribes 95 

adopted a pipe. With his money he pur- 
chased beads, trinkets, blankets, guns, pow- 
der, not forgetting for various reasons a sup- 
ply of rum. With these he purposed laying 
the foundation of his fortunes as an Indian 
trader. If the trader had several servants 
with him or was associated with other trad- 
ers he would fix his quarters in some large 
Indian town and send his subordinates to the 
surrounding villages, with a suitable supply 
of blankets, guns, hatchets, liquor, tobacco, 
etc. This wild traffic was liable to every 
species of disorder, a fruitful source of 
broils, robberies, and murders. The fur 
traders were a class of men held in contempt 
among the Iroquois and known among them 
by the significant title of Rum Carriers. The 
white trappers seem to have been as dissi- 
pated as the Indians. One writer declares 
that most of the Canadians drink so much 
brandy in the morning that they are unfit for 
work all day. Another says that when a 
canoe man is tired he will lift a keg of 
brandy to his lips and drink the raw liquor 
from the bung-hole, after which, having 
spoiled his appetite, he goes to bed supper- 



96 Americana Ebrietatis 

less, so with drink and hardship he is an old 
man at forty. The type of French trapper 
left in the old Northwest may still be seen 
far north in the great fur land; he is idle, 
devoted to singing, dancing, gossip, and 
drinking to intoxication; having vanity as 
his besetting sin. The Jesuits denounced the 
traffic. Their case was a strong one, but so 
was the case of their opponents. There was 
a real and imminent danger that the thirsty 
savages, if refused brandy by the French, 
would seek it from the Dutch and English 
of New York. It was the most potent lure 
and the most killing bait. Wherever it was 
found, there the Indians and their beaver 
skins were sure to go, and the interests of the 
fur trade, vital to the colony, were bound to 
go with it. Cadillac was especially incensed 
against the Jesuits on account of their op- 
position to the sale of spirits. So strong was 
their hostility that Louis XIV, in 1694, re " 
ferred to the Sorbonne for decision the 
question of allowing French brandy to be 
shipped to Michilimackinac. The decision 
of the Council gave to the Northwest its first 
prohibitory law; and the commandant was 



The Indian Tribes 97 

not more willing to enforce the order than 
his successors have been to carry out similar 
laws. "A drink of brandy after the repast," 
he maintained, "seems necessary to cook the 
bilious meats and the crudities which they 
leave in the stomach." Again, at Detroit, 
Cadillac quotes from a sermon by Father 
Carhail, whose wing he was engaged in 
plucking. The Jesuit had maintained that 
there was "no power, either human or di- 
vine, which can permit the sale of this 
drink." Hence, you perceive, argues the 
crafty commandant, "that this Father passes 
boldly on all matters of state, and will not 
even submit to the decision of the pope." 
The question was indeed a hard one for 
Cadillac. He understood clearly that unless 
he had liquor to sell to the savages he might 
as well abandon his post; for the Indians 
would go straight to the English at Albany 
where goods were cheap and rum was un- 
limited. To give up Detroit never entered 
Cadillac's plan. He therefore chose the 
middle course. Intead of prohibition he 
would have high license. In the restrictions 
which he threw about the traffic in liquors 



98 Americana Ebrietatis 

he was both honest and earnest; and, as 
events proved, he was far in advance of his 
times. In the report of M. d'Aigrement, 
who inspected Detroit in 1708, it is men- 
tioned as one of the grievances of the sav- 
ages against Cadillac that "in order to pre- 
vent disturbances which would arise from 
the excessive use of brandy, he caused it all 
to be put into the store-house and sold it at 
the rate of twenty francs a quart. Those 
who will have brandy, French as well as In- 
dians, are obliged to go to the store-house to 
drink, and each can obtain at one time only 
the twenty-fourth part of a quart. It is cer- 
tain that the savages cannot become intoxi- 
cated on that quantity. The price is high, 
and as they cannot get brandy only each in 
his turn, it sometimes happens that the sav- 
ages are obliged to return home without a 
taste of this beverage, and they seem ready 
to kill themselves with disappointment. 
Though the Jesuits refused absolution to all 
who sold brandy to the Indians, they sold it 
themselves. LaSalle had detected them 
in it." Count Frontenac declares that "The 
Jesuits greatly exaggerate the disorders 



The Indian Tribes 99 

caused by brandy and they easily convince 
persons who do not know the interested mo- 
tives which have led them to harp con- 
tinually on this string for more than forty 
years. . . They have long wished to have 
the fur trade entirely to themselves." Ap- 
peal was made to the King, who with his 
Jesuit confessor, guardian of his conscience, 
on the one side, and Colbert, guardian of his 
worldly interests, on the other, stood in some 
perplexity. The case was referred to the 
fathers of the Sorbonne and they pro- 
nounced the selling of brandy to the Indians 
a mortal sin. It was next referred to the 
chief merchants and inhabitants of Canada. 
Each was directed to write his views. The 
great majority were for unrestricted trade in 
brandy, a few fof limited and guarded trade, 
and two or three declared for prohibition. 
Decrees of prohibition were passed from 
tiem to time, but they were unavailing. The 
King was never at heart a prohibitionist. 
His Canadian revenue was drawn from the 
fur trade, and the singular argument of the 
partisans of brandy, that its attractions were 
needed to keep the Indians from contact 



ioo Americana Ebrietatis 

with heresy, served admirably to salve his 
conscience. The Dutch and English being 
the heretics, he distrusted the Bishop of 
Quebec, the great champion of the anti- 
liquor movement. He wrote to Saint Val- 
lier, Laval's successor in the bishopric, 
that the brandy trade was very useful to 
the kingdom of France, that it should be 
regulated, not prevented, that consciences 
must not be disturbed by denunciations of it 
as a sin, that the zeal of the ecclesiastics 
might be affected by personal interests and 
passions. 

From the time, in 1620, when Samoset and 
Tisquantum brought Massasoit to Plymouth 
to drink strong waters with the Puritans, 
liquor played a steady part in all negotia- 
tions between the white men and the red 
men. When Hamor went to visit Powhattan 
he was received with royal courtesy, "bread 
was brought in in two great wooden bowls, 
the quantity of a bushel of sod bread, made 
up round, of the bygnesse of a tenise-ball, 
whereof we ate some few." After this re- 
past Hamor and his comrades were regaled 
with "a great glasse of sacke" and then ush- 



The Indian Tribes 101 

ered into the wigwam for the night. From 
this time on at all Indian negotiations a 
large percentage of the Indians expected 
rum or whiskey to be produced. 

No other cause has been as prolific of In- 
dian wars as the liquor traffic. 

The war of the Indians with the Dutch in 
1675 in New York was caused by the sale of 
liquor and firearms to the Indians, as well as 
all the trouble that the Dutch ever seem to 
have had with their Indian neighbors. 

Liquor entered largely as a consideration 
into the purchase of land from the Indians, 
and the dispute over title and inadequate 
amounts frequently caused trouble. 

In 1675 Robert Livingston purchased a 
tract of land on the east side of Hudson 
river, near Catskill, which was paid for in 
guilders, blankets, shirts, cloth, tin kettles, 
powder, guns, twenty little looking-glasses, 
fish hooks, awls, nails, tobacco, knives, strong 
beer, four stroud coats, two duffel coats, four 
tin kettles, rum and pipes, ten pairs large 
stockings, ten pairs small stockings, adzes, 
paint, bottles, and scissors. The treaty with 
the Creek Indians was signed on October 



102 Americana Ebrietatis 

2I > 1733, when the governor distributed the 
following presents among the Indians: A 
laced coat and a laced hat and shirt to each 
of the chiefs ; to each of the warriors, a gun 
and a mantle of duffils (a coarse woolen 
cloth with nap and fringe), and to all their 
attendants coarse cloth for clothing; a barrel 
of gunpowder; four kegs of bullets; a piece 
of broadcloth; a piece of Irish linen; a cask 
of tobacco pipes; eight belts and cutlasses 
with gilt handles; tape, and of all colors; 
eight kegs of rum to be carried home to their 
towns ; one pound of powder, one pound of 
bullets, and as much provision for each one 
as they pleased to take for their journey 
home. 

In the spring of 1795 the directors of the 
Connecticut Land Company sent out survey- 
ors through the Mohawk, over the portage 
of Wood creek, Oneida lake, and the Os- 
wego river to Lake Ontario. At Buffalo the 
agent bought of the Indians their remaining 
claim to the lands east of the Cuyahoga river 
for five hundred pounds, New York curren- 
cy, two beef cattle, and one hundred gallons 
of whiskey. 



The Indian Tribes 103 

The murder in 1774 without provocation 
of the family of Logan, a friendly chief of 
the Cayuga nation and of great influence, 
Jefferson shows was due to the drunken- 
ness of two traders, Greathouse and Tom- 
linson, and caused Logan to deliver the 
speech which is often given in school read- 
ers. The Seminole War had the combined 
causes of slavery and liquor. President 
Jackson gave slave traders permission to buy 
slaves of the Seminole Indians. The trader, 
knowing that the Indians were intoxicated, 
would induce them to give bills of sale for 
negroes they did not own, and the complica- 
tions thus caused led to the Seminole War. 

The Black Hawk War was directly caused 
by the liquor traffic, while the career of Pon- 
tiac, the ablest Indian statesman his race 
ever produced, illustrates that drunkenness 
was the bane of the Indian race. In the 
same speech in which Pontiac said, "our 
people love liquor and if we dwelt near your 
old village of Detroit, our warriors would be 
always drunk," he concluded his harangue 
with the desire that the rum barrel might be 
opened and his warriors allowed to quench 



104 Americana Ebrietatis 

their thirst. His life was ended by an Eng- 
lish trader named Williamson, who bribed 
a strolling Indian of the Kaskia tribe by a 
barrel of rum to murder him, and for that 
reward the savage stole softly behind Pon- 
tiac while he was meditating in the forest 
and buried his hatchet in his brain, 

Of the influence of the white man on the 
Indians the less said the better. They erad- 
icated none of his vices and they lent him 
many of their own. They found him ab- 
stinent, and they made him a guzzler of fire 
water. They found him hospitable, and 
they made him suspicious and vindictive. 
They found him in freedom, the owner of a 
great country: they robbed him of the one, 
and crowded him out of the other. The 
Dutch were too much beer drinkers, became 
with speed rum consumers, and opposed 
prohibiting the sale of rum to the Indians. 
William Penn wrote in 1683 : "Ye Dutch, 
Sweed and English have by brandy and 
specially rum almost debauched ye Indians 
all." On arriving at a trading post an Indian 
hunting party would trade perhaps a third 
of their peltries for fine clothes, ammunition, 



The Indian Tribes 105 

paint, tobacco, and like articles. Then a keg 
of brandy would be purchased and the coun- 
cil held to decide who was to get drunk and 
who was to stay sober. All arms and clubs 
were taken away and hidden and the orgie 
would begin, all the Indians in the neighbor- 
hood being called in. It was the task of those 
who kept sober to prevent the drunken ones 
from killing one another, a task always haz- 
ardous and frequently unsuccessful, some- 
times as many as five being killed in one 
night. When the keg was empty brandy was 
brought by the kettle full and ladled out 
with large wooden spoons, and this was kept 
up until the last skin was disposed of. Then, 
dejected, wounded, lamed, with their fine 
new shirts torn, their blankets burned, and 
nothing but the ammunition and tobacco 
saved, they would start of! down the river to 
hunt, and begin again the same round of al- 
ternating toil and drudgery. Nevertheless, 
with all their rage for brandy they some- 
times showed a self control quite admirable 
in its way. When at a fair, a council, or a 
friendly visit their entertainers regaled them 
with rations of the coveted liquor, so pru- 



106 Americana Ebrietatis 

dently measured out that they could not be 
the worse for it, they would unite their sev- 
eral portions in a common stock, which they 
would then divide among a few of their 
number, thus enabling them to attain that 
complete intoxication which, in their view, 
was the true end of all drinking. The ob- 
jects of this benevolence were expected to 
requite it on a similar future occasion. In 
1708, of the sixty- three settlers at Detroit, 
thirty-four were traders, and the only profit- 
able articles of trade were ammunition and 
brandy, the English being able to undersell 
the French in all other commodities. At 
the time of the sales of furs every house in 
Montreal was a drinking shop. In a letter 
of Governor Halderman to Captain Ler- 
noult, dated July 23, 1729, Halderman says: 
"I observe with great concern the astonish- 
ing consumption of rum at Detroit, amount- 
ing to seventeen thousand five hundred and 
twenty gallons a year." 

In his notes on Virginia, Jefferson states 
that the census of 1669 showed that the In- 
dians of Virginia in sixty-two years de- 
creased about one-third, which decrease Jef- 



The Indian Tribes 107 

ferson attributes to spirituous liquors and 
the smallpox. When president, Jefferson 
recommended that the sale among the In- 
dian tribes of intoxicating liquors be pro- 
hibited. 

Of the traffic and its effect on the Indians 
a large amount of practically unanimous ev- 
idence can be produced. LeClercq observes 
with truth and candor that an Indian would 
be baptized ten times a day for a pint of 
brandy or a pound of tobacco. Father 
Etienne Carheil says : "Our missions are re- 
duced to such an extremity that we can no 
longer maintain them against the infinity of 
disorder, brutality, violence, injustice, im- 
piety, impurity, insolence, scorn, and insult 
which the deplorable and infamous traffic in 
brandy has spread universally among the In- 
dians of these parts. In the despair in which 
we are plunged, nothing remains for us but to 
abandon them to the brandy sellers as a do- 
main of drunkenness and debauchery." 

On one occasion the French Denonville 
lectured Dongon, the English governor, for 
allowing West India rum to be sent to the 
Long House. "Think you that religion will 



108 Americana Ebrietatis 

make any progress while your traders sup- 
ply the savages in abundance with the 
liquor, which as you ought to know converts 
them into demons, and their wigwams into 
counterparts of hell." One seems to see the 
Irishman's tongue curl under his cheek as 
he replies: "Methinks our rum does as lit- 
tle hurt as your brandy, and in the opinion 
of Christians is much more wholesome." 

Politics and Elections 

The presidential campaign of 1840 sur- 
passed in excitement and intensity of feeling 
all which had preceded it. Delegations to 
the whig conventions carried banners and 
often had a small log cabin mounted on 
wheels in which was a barrel of hard cider, 
the beverage of the campaign. Early in Har- 
rison's campaign comments were made on the 
elegant style of living in the White House 
during Van Buren's administration. Van 
Buren was charged with being an aristocrat 
and a monarchist while the masses toiled and 
suffered to pay for his luxurious living. A 
Richmond newspaper observed derisively of 



Politics and Elections 109 

Harrison, "Give him a barrel of hard cider 
and a pension of two thousand dollars and 
our word for it he will sit for the remainder 
of his days contented in a log cabin." Log 
cabins and hard cider thus became the sym- 
bols of a popular crusade. The log cabins 
were decked in frontier style with coonskins, 
bunches of corn, strings of peppers and 
dried apples and the like, and were set up in 
cities and villages. Inside these cabins co- 
pious supplies of cider were on tap to be 
drunk with gourds. The appropriateness of 
the symbol came from the fact that Harrison 
had formerly resided in a western log cabin, 
and the cider was meant to typify western 
hospitality. The result was that young and 
old drank the cider freely and the whig 
meetings often degenerated into mere 
drunken carousals, the example of which 
was especially injurious to the rising gen- 
eration. 

There are men still alive who claim that 
a single glass of wine drunk by Herschel V. 
Johnson was responsible for the wreck of 
the democratic party in i860 by unfitting 



no Americana Ebrietatis 

him to reply to the speech of Howell Cobb 
in favor of separate democratic nominations 
at the Georgia democratic state convention. 
The Count de Paris says of the vigilance 
committees that terrorized the South into se- 
cession: "The bar-room was generally the 
place of their meetings. Around the coun- 
ter on which gin and whiskey circulated 
freely a few frantic individuals pronounced 
judgment upon their fellow citizens, wheth- 
er present or absent." 

In one of the Lincoln-Douglas joint de- 
bates Douglas described his own father as 
an excellent cooper. Lincoln said he did 
not doubt the truth of the statement for he 
knew of one very good whisky cask he had 
made. As Douglas was short and thick-set 
and a heavy drinker the joke was enjoyed. 

On another occasion, Douglas said that 
when he first knew Lincoln, Lincoln was a 
good bar-tender. Lincoln in admitting that 
he had sold whisky said Douglas was one of 
his best customers, adding that he had left 
his side of the counter but Douglas had 
stuck to the other side. 



Early Defiance of Law III 

Early Defiance of Law 

In the last decade of the eighteenth cen- 
tury the Whiskey Rebellion arose from the 
refusal of the Scotch-Irish whiskey distillers 
of Pennsylvania to pay the excise on whis- 
key. If a collector came among them he 
was attacked, his books and papers taken, his 
commission torn up, and a solemn promise 
exacted that he would publish his resigna- 
tion in the Pittsburgh Gazette, If a farmer 
gave information as to where the stills could 
be found, his barns were burned. If a dis- 
tiller entered his stills as the law required, 
he was sure to be visited by a masked mob. 
Sometimes his grist-mill was made useless, 
sometimes his stills destroyed, or a piece of 
his saw-mill carried away, and a command 
laid upon him to publish what had been 
done to him in the Gazette. One unhappy 
man, who had rented his house to a collec- 
tor, was visited at the dead of night by a mob 
of blackened and disguised men. He was 
seized, carried to the woods, shorn of his 
hair, tarred, feathered, and bound to a tree. 
They next formed associations of those who, 



1 1 2 Americana Ebrietatis 

in the language of the district, were ready to 
"forbear" entering their stills. They ended 
by working themselves into a fury and call- 
ing a meeting of distillers for the 27th of 
July, at Restone, Old Fort, a town on which 
the inhabitants have since bestowed the 
humbler name of Brownsville. From this 
gathering went out a call for two conven- 
tions. One was to meet on the 23 d of Au- 
gust at Washington, in Pennsylvania. The 
date chosen for the meeting of the second 
was September 7th, and the place Pitts- 
burgh. Both were held. That at Washing- 
ton denounced the law and called on all 
good people to treat every man taking office 
under it with contempt, and withhold from 
him all comfort, aid, and support. That at 
Pittsburgh complained bitterly of the sal- 
aries of the federal officers, of the rate of in- 
terest on the national debt, of the Funding 
System, of the Bank, and of the tax on whis- 
key. Meantime the collector for the coun- 
ties of Washington and Alleghany was set 
upon. On the day before the Pittsburgh 
meeting a party of armed men waylaid him 
at a lonely spot on Pigeon creek, stripped, 



Early Defiance of Law 113 

tarred, and feathered him, cut off his hair, 
and took away his horse. They were dis- 
guised, but he recognized three of the band, 
and swore out warrants against them in the 
district court at Philadelphia. These were 
sent to the marshal ; but the marshal was a 
prudent man, and gave them to his deputy, 
who, early in October, went down into Al- 
leghany to serve them. He hid his errand, 
and as he rode along, beheld such signs of 
the angry mood of the people, and heard 
such threats, that he came back with the 
writs in his pocket unserved. And now he 
determined to send them under cover of pri- 
vate letters, and selected for the bearer a 
poor, half-witted cow-driver. The messen- 
ger knew not what he bore; but when the 
people found out that he was delivering 
writs, he was seized, robbed of his horse and 
money, whipped till he could scarcely stand, 
tarred, feathered, blindfolded, and tied to a 
tree in the woods. 

In 1794 a process went out from the dis- 
trict court at Philadelphia against seventy- 
five distillers who had disobeyed the law. 
Fifty were in the five counties of Fayette, 



114 Americana Ebrietatis 

Bedford, Alleghany, Washington, and West- 
moreland. Each writ was dated the 13th of 
May, and each was entered in the docket as 
issued on the 31st. But the officials were so 
tardy that it was July when the marshal rode 
west to serve them. He arrived in the hurry 
of harvest, when liquor circulated most free- 
ly and drunkenness was most prevalent. Yet 
he served his writs without harm till but one 
was left. It was drawn against a distiller 
named Miller, whose house was fourteen 
miles from Pittsburgh, on the road to Wash- 
ington. On the morning of July 15th the 
marshal set out from Pittsburgh to serve it. 
He found Miller in a harvest field surround- 
ed by a body of reapers. All went well till 
he was about to return, when one of them 
gave the alarm. While some threw down 
their scythes and followed him, others ran 
back to the house of the brigade inspector 
near by. There the Mingo creek regiment 
had gathered to make a select corps of mili- 
tia as its quota of the eighty thousand minute 
men required by Congress. All had drunk 
deeply, and as the messengers came up 
shouting "The federal sheriff is taking away 



Early Defiance of Law 1 15 

men to Philadelphia," they flew to arms. 
Though it was then night many set off at 
once, and gathering strength as they went, 
drew up the next morning, thirty-seven 
strong, before the house of Revenue Inspec- 
tor Neville, near Pittsburgh. At the head 
of them was John Holcroft who whitened 
half the trees in the four counties with the 
effusions of Tom the Tinker. The inspector 
demanded what they wished. They an- 
swered evasively. He fired upon them. 
They returned the shot, and were instantly 
opened on by a band of negroes posted in a 
neighboring house. At this the mob scat- 
tered, leaving six wounded and one dead. 
Tom the Tinker was a nom-de-guerre which 
originated from the house of an obnoxious 
official being pulled to pieces by a mob 
whose members gave out that they were 
"mending it." Mending and tinkering be- 
ing interchangeable terms, the members 
dubbed themselves "tinkers," and "Tom the 
Tinker was shortly evolved as the popular 
watchword of the first rebellion against the 
United States government." 



CHAPTER VIII 

Christenings — Marriages — Funerals 

In early American history the use of liquor 
by an infant seems to have been nearly co- 
incident with its entrance into life. A fam- 
ily receipt called Caudle has been handed 
down through the family of Mrs. Johannes 
de Peyster, and calls for "three gallons of 
water, seven pounds of sugar, oatmeal by the 
pound, spice, raisins and lemons by the 
quart and two gallons of the very best Ma- 
deira wine." This was especially served at 
the baptism of a child, and partaken of exten- 
sively by the women. In early times the Pur- 
itan women drank cider and Madeira mixed 
with water, and much scandal was given by 
the readiness with which the merry wives of 
Philadelphia joined in their husbands' com- 
fortable potations. The eighteenth century 
was the drinking era, and our colony fol- 
lowed in no halting measure the jovial fash- 



Christenings — Marriages — Funerals 117 

ions of the day. In 1733 the Pennsylvania 
Gazette laments that Philadelphia women, 
"otherwise discreet," instead of contenting 
themselves with one good draught of beer in 
the morning take "two or three drams by 
which their appetite for wholesome food is 
destroyed." Women kept ordinaries and 
taverns from early days. Widows abounded, 
for the life of the male colonist was hard, 
exposure was great, and many died in mid- 
dle age. War also had many victims. Tav- 
ern-keeping was the resort of widows of 
small means then. Many licenses were 
granted to them to keep victualling houses, 
to draw wine, and make and sell beer. 
In 1684 the wife of one Nicholas Howard 
was licensed "to entertain lodgers in the 
absence of her husband"; while other 
women were permitted to sell food and 
drink but could not entertain lodgers be- 
cause their husbands were absent from home, 
thus drawing nice distinctions. A Salem 
dame in 1645 could keep an ordinary if she 
provided "a godly man" to manage her busi- 
ness. 
Wedding festivities seemed to have caused 



1 1 8 Americana Ebrietatis 

about the same amount of liquor drinking 
throughout the country. In the new land 
weddings and births were joyful events. 
The colonists broke with the home traditions 
and insisted on being married at home rather 
than at church. As civilization advanced 
and habits grew more luxurious the mar- 
riage festivities grew more elaborate and 
became affairs of serious expense. Scharf, 
in his Chronicles of Baltimore, says the 
house would be filled with company to dine ; 
the same company would stay to supper. 
For two days punch was dealt out in pro- 
fusion. The gentlemen saw the groom on 
the first floor, and then ascended to the sec- 
ond floor where they saw the bride; there 
every gentleman, even to one hundred a day, 
kissed her. Weddings in old Philadelphia 
were very expensive and harassing to the 
wedded. The bride's home was filled with 
company to dine, the same guests usually 
stayed to tea, while for two days punch was 
served in great profusion. Kissing the bride 
and drinking punch seem to have been the 
leading features of these entertainments. 
A custom prevailed in southern Pennsyl- 



Christenings — Marriages — Funerals 119 

vania of barring the progress of the coach 
of the newly married pair by ropes and 
other obstacles, which were not removed 
until the groom paid toll in the form of a 
bottle of wine, or of drinks to his perse- 
cutors. 

The famous Schuyler wedding cake had, 
among other ingredients, twelve dozen eggs, 
forty-eight pounds of raisins, twenty-four 
pounds of currants, four quarts of brandy, 
a quart of rum. This was mixed in a wash 
tub. 

From the earliest period funerals seem to 
have caused more expense and drunkenness 
than weddings. In Sewell's Diary of the 
date of August 2, 1725, he says of the funeral 
of Mrs. Catherine Winthrop: "Had good 
birth-cake, good wine, Burgundy and Ca- 
nary, good Beer, oranges and pears." The 
Puritan funerals were accompanied with so 
much drinking that a law had to be passed 
to check the extravagance. In Massachu- 
setts one funeral cost six hundred pounds. 
Parker, in his history of Londonderry, says : 

"Their funeral observances were of a 
character in some respects peculiar. When 



120 Americana Ebrietatis 

death entered their community and one of 
their members was removed, there was at 
once a cessation of all labor in the neighbor- 
hood. The people gathered together at the 
house of mourning, observed a custom which 
they had brought with them from Ireland, 
called a 'wake' or watching with the dead, 
from night to night until the interment. 
These night scenes often exhibited a mixture 
of seriousness and of humor which appear 
incompatible. The Scriptures would be 
read, prayer offered, and words of counsel 
and consolation administered ; but ere long, 
according to established usage, the glass with 
its exhilarating beverage, must circulate 
freely. Although funeral sermons were sel- 
dom if ever delivered on the occasion, yet 
there would be usually as large a congrega- 
tion as assembled on the Sabbath. Previous 
to the prayer, spirit was handed round, not 
only to the mourners and bearers, but to the 
whole assembly. Again after prayer, and 
before the coffin was removed, the same was 
done. Nearly all would follow the body to 
the grave, and at their return the comforting 
draught was again administered, and ample 



Christenings — Marriages — Funerals 121 

entertainment provided. Many a family be- 
came embarrassed in consequence of the 
heavy expenses incurred, not so much by the 
sickness which preceded the death of one of 
its members, as by the funeral services as 
then observed, and which, as they supposed, 
respect for the dead required." 

In New York state before a burial took 
place a number of persons, usually friends 
of the dead, watched the body throughout 
the night, liberally supplied with various 
bodily comforts, such as abundant strong 
drink, plentiful tobacco and pipes, and new- 
ly-made cakes. These watchers were not 
wholly gloomy nor did the midnight hours 
lag unsolaced. A Dutch funeral was costly, 
the expenditure for gloves, scarfs, and rings 
was augmented in New York by the gift of 
a bottle of wine and a linen scarf. At the 
funeral of Louis Wingard, in Albany, the 
attendance was large, and many friends re- 
turned to the house and made a night of it. 
These sober Albany citizens drank a pipe of 
wine, and smoked much tobacco. They 
broke hundreds of pipes and all the decan- 
ters in the house, and wound up by burning 



122 Americana Ebrietatis 

all their funeral scarfs in a heap in the fire- 
place. At Albany the expense reached the 
climax. The obsequies of the first wife of 
Stephen Van Renssalaer cost $20,000; two 
thousand linen scarfs were given and all the 
tenants were entertained several days. 

On Long Island a young man of good 
family began his youth by laying aside 
money in gold coin for his funeral, and a su- 
perior stock of wine was also stored for the 
same occasion. In Albany a cask of choice 
Madeira was bought for the wedding and 
used in part; the remainder was saved for 
the funeral of the bridegroom. Up the 
Hudson were the vast manors of the Beek- 
mans, Livingstons, Van Renssalaers, Schuy- 
lers, and Johnsons, where these patroons 
lived among and ruled over their tenantry 
like the feudal lords of old England. When 
a member of the Van Renssalaer family died, 
the tenants, sometimes amounting to several 
thousand, says Bishop Kip, came down to 
Albany to pay their respects to his memory, 
and to drink to the peace of his soul in good 
ale from his generous cellars. At the burial 



Christenings — Marriages — Funerals 1 23 

of Philip Livingston, in New York, services 
were performed at both his house and at the 
manor house. The funeral is thus described 
in a journal of the day: "In the City the 
lower rooms of most of the houses in Broad- 
street, where he resided, were thrown open 
to receive visitors. A pipe of wine was 
spiced for the occasion, and to each of the 
eight bearers, with a pair of gloves, mourn- 
ing ring, scarf and handkerchief, a monkey 
spoon was given. At the manor these cere- 
monies were all repeated, another pipe of 
wine was spiced, and besides the same pres- 
ents to the bearers, a pair of black gloves 
and a handkerchief were given to each of the 
tenants. The whole expense was said to be 
five hundred pounds." At funerals in old 
New York it was customary to serve hot 
wine in winter and sangaree in summer. 
Burnt wine was sometimes served in silver 
tankards. Death among the Dutch involved 
much besides mourning. "Bring me a Bar- 
rel of Cutt Tobacco, some long pipes, I am 
out also six silver Tankards. Bottles, 
Glasses, Decanters we have enough. You 



124 Americana Ebrietatis 

must bring Cinnamon and Burnt wine, for 
we have none," writes Will Livingston, in 
1756, on the death of his mother. 

Here is the funeral bill of Peter Jacobs 
Marinus, one of the most prominent of old 
time New York merchants, who died in the 
latter part of the seventeenth century: 

£ s. d. 

To 29 galls of Wyne at 6s. 9d. 

per gallon, 9 15 9 

" 19 pairs of gloves at 2s. 3d. 2 4 3 

For bottles and glass broke, 

paid 3 7 

Paid 2 women each 2 days at- 
tendance 15 

Paid a suit of mourning for ye 
negro woman freed by ye 
testator, and making 347 

Paid for 800 cookies & i 1 /*, 

gross of pipes, at 3s. 3d. 677 

Paid for Speys [spice] for ye 

burnte wyne and sugar, 1 1 

Paid to the sexton and bell 
ringer for making ye grave 
and ringing ye bell, 220 

Paid for ye coffin, 4 

Paid for gold and making 14 
mourning rings, 2 16 

Paid for 3 yards beaver stuff 



Christenings — Marriages — Funerals 1 25 

at 7s. 6d. buttons, and mak- 
ing it for a suit of mourning, 114 6 
Paid for y 2 vat of single Beer, 7 6 

Whole amount of funeral 

charges is 3168 

It should be noted that one of the per- 
quisites of the doctor's office was the sale of 
spices, and on the occasion of funerals they 
did a thriving business. 

In 1764 a reform movement swept through 
the northern colonies and stopped this ex- 
travagance at funerals, so that when Judge 
Clark died in New Jersey, in 1765, there 
was no drinking at his funeral. Previous to 
this time it was not unusual for testators to 
direct that no liquor should be distributed 
at their funeral, just as today the request is 
made in regard to funerals that no flowers 
be sent. 

That the funeral of President Lincoln 
cost the city of Chicago over eight hundred 
dollars for the "mourners" was revealed 
lately in an old whisky and wine bill dis- 
covered by City Clerk John R. McCabe. 
The bill is headed: 

Report of Comptroller of amount paid 



126 Americana Ebrietatis 

for wine and whisky furnished members of 
the legislature and the "mourners" at the 
obsequies of the late president, accepted and 
filed August 7, 1865. 

48 bottles of wine $216.00 

12 bottles whisky 30.00 

Wine for Congressional Committee 199.00 
Wine & Whisky extras, Supervisors 

room, 24.00 

$469.00 



CHAPTER IX 

Vendues — Chopping Bees — House Bees — 
Wood Spells — Clearing Bees 

In a new settlement more than half the 
houses were log cabins. When a stranger 
came to such a place to stay, the men built 
him a cabin and made the building an oc- 
casion for sport. The trees felled, four cor- 
ner men were elected to notch the logs, and 
while they were busy the others ran races, 
wrestled, played leap-frog, kicked the hat, 
fought, gouged, gambled, drank, did every- 
thing then considered amusement. It was 
not luck that made these raisings a success. 
It was skill and strength, and powers of en- 
durance, which could overcome and sur- 
mount even the quantity of vile New Eng- 
land rum with which the workmen were 
plied during the day. In the older and 
more settled parts of the country when the 
first stones of a new wall were laid the ma- 
sons were given a case of brandy, an anker 



128 Americana Ebrietatis 

of brandy, and thirty-two gallons of other 
liquid. When the beams were carried in by 
eight men they had a half barrel of beer for 
every beam; when the beams were laid two 
barrels of strong beer, three cases of brandy, 
and seventy-two florins' worth of small beer. 
This was the case in 1656 when the old fort 
at Albany was removed and a new one built. 
A tun of beer was furnished to the pullers 
down, and in addition to the above items the 
wood carriers, teamsters, carpenters, stone 
cutters, and masons had, besides these special 
treats, a daily dram of a gill of brandy 
apiece, and three pints of beer at dinner. 
They were dissatisfied and solicited another 
pint of beer. Even the carters who brought 
wood and boatmen who floated down spars 
were served with liquor. When the carpen- 
ters placed the roof tree a half-barrel of 
liquor was given them; another half-barrel 
of beer under the name of tiles beer went to 
the tile setters. The special completion of 
the winding staircase demanded five guild- 
ers' worth of liquor. When the house was 
finished a Kreag or house warming of both 
food and drink to all the workmen and their 



Vendues and Bees 129 

wives was demanded and refused. Well 
might it be refused, when the liquor bill 
without it amounted to seven hundred and 
sixteen guilders. The whole cost of the fort 
was twelve thousand, two hundred and thir- 
teen guilders, or about three thousand, five 
hundred dollars. The liquor bill was about 
three hundred dollars. When the building 
was completed it was christened by breaking 
over it a bottle of rum. 

Chopping bees were the universal method 
among pioneers of clearing ground in newly- 
settled districts. Sometimes this bee was 
held to clear land for a newly married cou- 
ple, or a new neighbor, or one who had had 
bad luck; but it was just as freely given to a 
prosperous farmer though plentiful thanks 
and plentiful rum were the only reward of 
the willing workers. 

Lyman Beecher, in his autobiography, de- 
scribes the minister's wood spell, which was 
a bee held for the purpose of drawing and 
cutting the winter's supply of wood for the 
clergyman, and a large amount of beer and 
cider was provided for the consumption of 
the parishioners. 



130 Americana Ebrietatis 

Old Ames, of Dedham, Massachusetts, in 
1767, describes a corn-husking as follows: 

"Possibly this leafe may last a Century 
and fall in the hands of some inquisitive 
person for whose entertainment I will in- 
form him that now there is a custom 
amongst us of making an entertainment at 
husking of Indian corn whereto all the 
neighboring swains are invited, and after 
the corn is finished they like the Hotten- 
tots give three cheers or huzzars, but can- 
not carry in the husks without a Rhum bot- 
tle; they feign great exertion but do noth- 
ing till Rhum enlivens them, when all is 
done in a trice, then after a hearty meal 
about ten o'clock at night they go to their 
pastimes." 

In 1687 William Fitzhugh wrote to Nich- 
olas Hayward, then in England, as follows: 
"Upon finishing the first line at your corner 
tree on the Potomac your brother Sam, my- 
self and some others drank your health." 
The diary of old Governor Spottswood con- 
firms the custom of drinking at the comple- 
tion of a survey, for in 17 16 he with some 
other Virginia gentlemen and their retain- 



Vendues and Bees 131 

ers, a company of rangers and four Indians, 
fifty-four persons in all, journeyed over the 
Blue Ridge mountains and descended to the 
Shenandoah Valley. After drinking the 
King's health they descended the western 
slope to the river, which they crossed and 
named "Euphrates." The governor took 
formal possession of the region for George 
I., of England. Much light is thrown on 
the convivial habits of Virginians at that 
time by an entry found in the diary of the 
chroniclers : "We got all the men together 
and loaded their arms, and we drank the 
King's health in champagne and fired a vol- 
ley, the prince's health in Burgundy and 
fired a volley, and all the rest of the royal 
family in claret and a volley; we drank the 
Governor's health and fired another volley. 
We had several sorts of liquor, viz : Virginia 
red wine and white wine, Irish usquebaugh, 
brandy, shrub, two sorts of rum, cham- 
pagne, canary, cherry punch, cider, etc." 

It was the custom when land was trans- 
ferred that a libation should be poured to 
Bacchus, and to such an extent was this car- 
ried that when Peter Jefferson, the father of 



132 Americana Ebrietatis 

Thomas Jefferson, purchased four hundred 
acres of Virginia land from his old friend 
and neighbor, William Randolph, of Tuck- 
ahoe, the consideration jovially named in the 
deed is given as "Henry Weatherbourne's 
Biggest Bowl of Arrack Punch." 

The breaking of roads furnished another 
occasion for the consumption of liquor, and 
is well described by Whittier: 

Next morn we wakened with the shout 
Of merry voices high and clear; 
And saw the teamsters drawing near 
To break the drifted highways out. 
Down the long hillside treading slow 
We saw the half-buried oxen go, 
Shaking the snow from heads uptost, 
Their straining nostrils white with frost. 
Before our door the straggling train 
Drew up, an added team to gain. 
The elders threshed their hand a-cold, 
Passed, with the cider mug, their jokes 
From lip to lip. 

Traveling and Taverns 

Traveling in ye olden time was by stage 
going at the rate of ten miles an hour, always 
stopping at taverns for meals and giving pas- 
sengers an opportunity to visit the bar to im- 



Traveling and Taverns 133 

bibe Holland gin and sugar-house molasses, 
a popular morning beverage. When the 
Revolution came most of these vehicles 
ceased to ply between the distant cities; 
horseback traveling was resumed, and a 
journey of any length became a matter of 
grave consideration. On the day of depar- 
ture the friends of the traveler gathered at 
the inn, took a solemn leave of him, drank 
his health in bumpers of punch, and wished 
him God-speed on his way. It was no un- 
common thing for one who went on business 
or pleasure from Charleston to Boston or 
New York to consult the almanac before 
setting out and to make his will. A traveler 
was a marked man, and his arrival at an or- 
dinary was the signal for the gathering of all 
who could crowd in to hear his adventures 
and also the news. Colonel Byrd was a typ- 
ical cavalier, and in writing of his visit to 
Germanna shows an appreciation of the 
good things of life, with a hearty good will 
toward his neighbor and especially his 
neighbor's wife, and a zest for all good 
things to eat and drink. In his trips he 
smacks his lips over the fat things that fall 



134 Americana Ebrietatis 

in his way. Now it is a prime rasher of ba- 
con, fricasseed in rum; now a capacious 
bowl of bombo. He tells how he commend- 
ed his family to the Almighty, fortified him- 
self with a beefsteak, and kissed his land- 
lady for good luck, before setting out on his 
travels. 

The liquor traffic added to the discom- 
forts of travel by water. At New York un- 
til the rude steamboats of Fulton made their 
appearance on the ferry, the only means of 
transportation for man and beast were clum- 
sy row-boats, flat bottomed, square ended 
scows with sprit-sails, and two masted boats 
called periaguas. In one of these, if the day 
were fine, if the tide were slack, if the water- 
man were sober, and if the boat did not put 
back several times to take in belated passen- 
gers who were seen running down the hill, 
the crossing might be made with some de- 
gree of speed and comfort and a landing 
effected at the foot of the steps at the pier 
which, much enlarged, still forms part of 
the Brooklyn slip of the Fulton Ferry. 

Near Philadelphia at Gloucester Point, if 
the wind and tide failed, the vessel dropped 



Traveling and Taverns 135 

anchor for the night. If passengers were 
anxious to be landed in haste they were 
charged half a dollar each to be rowed 
ashore. At one in the morning the tide 
again turned. But the master was then 
drunk and before he could be made to un- 
derstand what was wanted the tide was again 
ebbing and the boat aground. 

In the west and south the taverns were 
generally bad. When Silas Deane and his 
fellow delegates went down to the Continen- 
tal Congress in 1774 they found "no fruit, 
bad rum, and nothing of the meat kind but 
salt pork." At another tavern they had to 
go out and "knock over three or four chick- 
ens to be roasted for their dinner." No por- 
ter was to be had at another inn, and the one 
palatable drink was some bottled cider. 

The Marquis de Chastelleux writes of 
this region in 1790 in his Travels in North 
America: Landing on a dark night at 
Courtheath's Tavern the landlord com- 
plained that he was obliged to live in this 
out-of-the-way place of Pompton. He ex- 
pressed surprise at finding on the parlor 
table copies of Milton, Addison, Richard- 



136 Americana Ebrietatis 

son, and other authors of note. The cellar 
was not so well stocked as the library. He 
could get nothing but vile cider brandy, of 
which he must make grog. The bill for a 
night's lodging and food for himself, his 
servants and horses, was $16.00. 

Much might be written about the taverns, 
which from the very beginning played an 
important part in this cheerful, prosperous, 
unplagued colonial life. Their faded sign- 
boards swung in every street, and curious 
old verses still remain to show us what our 
wise forefathers liked to read. One little 
pot-house had painted on its board these en- 
couraging lines : 

This is the tree that never grew, 
This is the bird that never flew; 
This is the ship that never sailed, 
This is the mug that never failed. 

It was not against every tavern that the re- 
proach could be brought that each person 
could not have a room to himself, or at least 
clean sheets without paying extra. Many a 
New England village inn could, in the opin- 
ion of the most fastidious Frenchman, well 
bear comparison with the best to be found in 



Traveling and Taverns 137 

France. The neatness of the rooms, the 
goodness of the beds, the cleanliness of the 
sheets, the smallness of the reckoning, filled 
him with amazement. Nothing like them 
was to be met with in France. There the 
wayfarer who stopped at an ordinary over 
night slept in a bug-infested bed, covered 
himself with ill-washed sheets, drank adul- 
terated wine, and to the annoyance of greedy 
servants was added the fear of being robbed. 
But in New England he might with perfect 
safety pass night after night at an inn whose 
windows were destitute of shutters, and 
whose doors had neither locks nor keys. 
Save the post office it was the most frequent- 
ed house in town. The great room with its 
low ceiling and neatly sanded floor, its 
bright pewter dishes and stout-backed, slat- 
bottomed chairs ranged along the walls, its 
long table, its huge fireplace, with the 
benches on each side, where the dogs slept at 
night, and where the guests sat when the dip 
candles were lighted, to drink mull and flip, 
possessed some attractions for every one. 
The place was at once the town hall and the 
assembly room, the court house and the show 



138 Americana Ebrietatis 

tent, the tavern and the exchange. There 
the selectmen met. There the judges some- 
times held court. On its door were fastened 
the list of names drawn for the jury, notices 
of vendues, offers for reward for stray cattle, 
the names of tavern haunters, the advertise- 
ments of the farmers who had the best seed- 
potatoes and the best seed-corn for sale. It 
was at the "General Green," or the "United 
States Arms," or the "Bull's Head" that 
wandering showmen exhibited their autom- 
atons and musical clocks, that dancing mas- 
ters gave their lessons, that singing school 
was held, that the caucus met, that the 
Colonel stopped during general training. 
The tavern porch was the rallying point 
of the town; hither all news came; here 
all news was discussed ; hence all news was 
disseminated. DeWitt Clinton in his fa- 
mous letters on political parties says: "In 
every county or village inn the barroom is 
the coffee room exchange, or place of intel- 
ligence, where all the quid nuncs and news- 
mongers and politicians of the district re- 
sort." Many were the good reasons that 
could be given to explain and justify atten- 



Traveling and Taverns 139 

dance at an old-time tavern. One was the 
fact that often the only newspaper that came 
to town was kept therein. This dingy tav- 
ern sheet often saw hard usage, for when it 
went its rounds some could scarcely read it, 
some but pretend to read it. One old fellow 
in Newburyport opened it wide, gazed at it 
with interest, and cried out to his neighbor 
in much excitement: "Bad news! Terrible 
gales, terrible gales, ships all bottom side 
up," as indeed they were in his way of hold- 
ing the news sheet. The extent and pur- 
poses to which the tavern sheet might be ap- 
plied can be guessed from the notice written 
over the mantel-shelf in the taproom : "Gen- 
tlemen learning to spell are requested to use 
last week's news-letter." A picturesque and 
grotesque element of tavern life was found 
in those last leaves on the tree, the few of 
Indian blood who lingered after the tribes 
were scattered and nearly all were dead. 
These tawnies could not be made as useful 
in the tavern yard as the shiftless and shift- 
ing negro element that also drifted to the 
tavern, for the eastern Indian never loved a 
horse as did the negro, and seldom became 



140 Americana Ebrietatis 

handy in the care of horses. These waifs of 
either race, the half-breeds of both races, 
circled around the tavern chiefly because a 
few stray pennies might be earned there, and 
also because within the tavern were plenti- 
ful supplies of cider and rum. 

In Pennsylvania the Moravians became 
famous for their inns. The "Nazareth," the 
"Rose," and the "Crown" at Bethlehem 
were well known. The story of the Rose 
Tavern is prettily told by Professor Reichel, 
under the title "A Red Rose from The Old- 
en Time," it being built on land leased by 
William Penn, on the rent of one red rose. 
The best one of all however was "The Sun" 
at Bethlehem, which was familiar for nearly 
a century to all the people from Massachu- 
setts to the Carolinas. At different times the 
inn has entertained beneath its roof nearly 
all the signers of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, most of the members of the Con- 
tinental Congress, and all the presidents of 
the United States down to Lincoln. That 
the wines were remarkable and that the inn 
had its brand of Madeira, goes without say- 
ing. The early Moravians lived largely on 



Traveling and Taverns 141 

game, and cultivated a great variety of vege- 
tables. Deer and grouse were very abun- 
dant on the barrens in the manor of the Red 
Rose. It was long a favorite sporting 
ground for Philadelphians, and the resort 
of colonial governors. The wayfarers at 
the inn lived on all delicacies in the greatest 
abundance, together with the famous fruit, 
trout, shad, and wild strawberries. For- 
eigners who stopped there invariably de- 
clared that the inn was fully equal to the 
best in Europe. It was owned and man- 
aged by the Moravian church as part of its 
communal system. 

A good southern hotel of which there 
were few was a large brick building with a 
long veranda in front. For a shilling and 
sixpence, Virginia currency, the traveler 
was shown to a neat bed in a well furnished 
room up one flight of stairs. On the wall 
was fastened a printed table of rates. From 
this he learned that breakfast cost two shil- 
lings, and dinner with grog or toddy was 
three ; that a quart of toddy was one and six, 
that a bottle of porter was two and six, and 
that the best Madeira wine sold for six shil- 



142 Americana Ebrietatis 

lings a quart. When he rose in the morning 
he washed his face, not in his room, but on 
the piazza, and ate his breakfast in the cool- 
est of dining rooms, at a table adorned with 
pewter spoons and china plates. Off at one 
side was a tub full of water wherein melons 
and cucumbers, pitchers of milk and bottles 
of wine, were placed to cool. Near by was 
a water case which held the decanters. If 
he called for water a wench brought it fresh 
from the spring, and he drank from a glass 
which had long been cooling in a barrel 
which stood in one corner of the room. In 
winter the fire blazed high on the hearth, 
and the toddy hissed in the noggin ; in sum- 
mer the basket of fruit stood in the breeze- 
swept hall, and lightly clad black boys 
tripped in bearing cool tankards of punch 
and sangaree. 

For his lodging and his board, if he ate 
a cold supper, and was content with one 
quart of toddy, he paid to the landlord of 
the Eagle ten shillings, Virginia currency, 
or one dollar and sixty-six cents federal 
money, each day. As to New York taverns, 



Traveling and Taverns 143 

in a letter written by Dr. Mitchel in Sep- 
tember, 1794, he states : "The Tontine Cof- 
fee House, under the care of Mr. Hyde is 
the best hotel in New York. He sets from 
twelve to sixteen dishes every day. He 
charges for a years board without liquor 
Three Hundred and Fifty to Four Hundred 
Dollars." 

In Gloucester, Massachusetts, as in other 
towns the selectmen held their meetings in 
the tavern. There were five selectmen in 
1744, whose salary was five dollars apiece. 
Their tavern bill, however, amounted to thir- 
ty pounds. The following year the citizens 
voted the selectmen a salary of five pounds 
apiece and "to find themselves." 

In 1825 the expense of living at the In- 
dian Queen in Washington was not great. 
The price of board was $1.75 per day, 
$10.00 a week, or $35.00 a month. Brandy 
and whiskey were placed on the tables in 
decanters to be drunk by the guests without 
additional charge therefor. A bottle of real 
old Madeira imported into Alexandria was 
supplied for $3.00; sherry, brandy, and gin 



144 Americana Ebrietatis 

were $1.00 per bottle, and Jamaica rum 
$1.00. At the bar toddies were made with 
unadulterated liquor and lump sugar, and 
the charge was twelve and a half cents a 
drink. 



CHAPTER X 

Extent and Effect of the Traffic at 
Flood Tide 

In 1648 one-fourth of the buildings of 
New Amsterdam, or New York, were tap- 
houses. 

In his notes on Virginia, Jefferson states 
that in 1682 there were in Virginia fifty- 
three thousand, two hundred and eighty- 
nine free males above twenty-one years of 
age and one hundred and ninety-one taverns. 
About this time their number was so great 
that they were limited by law in each county 
to one at the court house and one at the 
ferry. 

The diary of Judge Sewall shows that in 
17 14 Boston had a population of ten thou- 
sand, with thirty-four ordinaries, of whom 
twelve were women; four common victual- 
lers, of whom one was a woman; forty-one 
retailers of liquor, of whom seventeen were 
women, and a few cider sellers. 



146 Americana Ebrietatis 

As soon as the white settlers had planted 
themselves at Pittsburgh they made requisi- 
tion on Philadelphia for six thousand kegs 
of flour and three thousand kegs of whiskey. 
There were distilleries on nearly every 
stream emptying into the Monongahela. 

The Chicago directory for 1830 classified 
its business interests as taverns, two ; Indian 
traders, three; butchers, one; merchants, 
one; with a poll list of thirty-two voters. 

So much seed sown from the earliest 
times produced a bountiful harvest. In 
1633 Winthrop complains that workmen 
were idle in spite of high wages because 
they spent so much in tobacco and strong 
waters. About this time drunkenness great- 
ly increased and deprived the custom of 
bundling of whatever innocence it may have 
had remaining. 

Josselyn, in 1675, gives a graphic descrip- 
tion of the extravagance and drunkenness of 
the cod fishermen, stating that at the end of 
each voyage they drank up their earnings. 
In this year Cotton Mather said every house 
in Boston was an ale house. In 1696 Na- 
thaniel Saltonstall, of Haverhill, Massachu- 



Traffic at Flood Tide 147 

setts, a judge who had refused to sit in the 
Salem witchcraft cases, wrote a letter to the 
Salem court remonstrating against licensing 
public houses. In 1678 Dr. Increase Math- 
er said : "Many of the rising generation are 
profane, drunkards, swearers licentious and 
scoffers at the power of godliness." Dan- 
kers and Sluyter, in 1680, comment on the 
puritanical laws and say, "drinking and 
fighting occur there not less than elsewhere 
and as to truth and true godliness you must 
not expect more of them than of others." 

The Reverend John Miller, in his history 
of New York, says : " 'Tis in this country 
a common thing even for the meanest per- 
sons as soon as the bounty of God has fur- 
nished them with a bountiful crop to turn 
what they can as soon as may be into money, 
and that money into drinks, at the same time 
when their family at home have nothing but 
rags to resist the winter's cold; nay if the 
fruits of their plantations be such as are by 
their own immediate labor convertible into 
liquor such as cider, perry, etc., they have 
scarce the patience to wait till it is fit for 
drinking but inviting their boon companions 



148 Americana Ebrietatis 

they all of them neglecting whatever work 
they are about, set to it together and give not 
over till they have drunk it off. And to these 
sottish engagements they will make nothing 
to ride ten or fifteen miles and at the con- 
clusion of one debauch another is generally 
appointed except their stock of liquor fail 
them." In his history of New Haven Henry 
Atwater states : "A brew-house was regard- 
ed as an essential part of a homestead, and 
beer was on the table as regularly as bread." 
When in Stuyvesant's day it was reported 
that fully one-fourth of the houses in New 
Amsterdam were devoted to the sale of 
brandy, tobacco, and beer, Mr. Roberts ob- 
served : 

"Their existence tells the story of the hab- 
its of the people. It was when Governor 
Sloughter was besotted with drink that he 
signed the illegal death warrant of Leisler; 
it was when the informer Kane was pos- 
sessed by the fumes of liquor of the tavern, 
that he foisted upon the terrified colonists 
the lying details of the shameful negro plot; 
it was when the representative of the most 
powerful family in the province, Chief Jus- 



Whiskey as Money 149 

tice DeLancey, and Governor Clinton, the 
proxy of the King, were 'in their cups' that 
a personal quarrel led to antagonisms that 
threatened the welfare of the colony. In- 
deed the deep hold that this vice had upon 
the morals of the entire colony seemed to re- 
peat and emphasize the wisdom of the name 
which the earlier Spanish in an intercourse 
had fastened upon its leading town — Mon- 
afos — 'the place of the drunken men.'" 

Whiskey as Money 

In a large part of the territory now the 
United States the early settlers lived in the 
rudest kind of log cabins and knew no other 
money than whiskey and the skins of wild 
beasts. In 1780, after the collapse of the 
continental currency, it seemed there was no 
money in the country, and in the absence of 
a circulating medium there was a reversion 
to the practice of barter, and the revival of 
business was thus further impeded. Whis- 
key in North Carolina and tobacco in Vir- 
ginia did duty as measures of value. In 
Pennsylvania what a bank bill was at Phila- 
delphia or a shilling piece at Lancaster, 



150 Americana Ebrietatis 

whiskey was in the towns and villages that 
lay along the banks of the Monongahela 
river. It was the money, the circulating 
medium of the country. A gallon of good 
whiskey at every store in Pittsburgh, and at 
every farmhouse in the four counties of 
Washington, Westmoreland, Alleghany, and 
Fayette, was the equivalent of a shilling. 
And when, in 1797, the government began 
to coin new money for the people, the new 
coins did not, many of them, go far from the 
seaports and great towns. In the country 
districts,. in the Ohio valley, on the northern 
border they were still unknown. The school- 
master received his pittance in French 
crowns and Spanish half-joes. The boat- 
men were paid their hire in shillings and 
pence, and if perchance some traveler paid 
his reckoning at a tavern with a few Ameri- 
can coins, they were beheld with wonder by 
every lounger who came there to smoke and 
drink. 

Temperance Societies 

The first prohibitory law was that of 
Georgia, in 1733, and the first dawn of tem- 
perance sentiment was undoubtedly the 



Temperance Societies 151 

pledge of Governor Winthrop, still earlier 
than this, when he announced his famous 
discountenance of health drinking. This 
first of all temperance pledges in New Eng- 
land is recorded in his diary in language as 
temperate as his intent: 

"The Governor, upon consideration of the 
inconveniences which have grown in New 
England by drinking one to another, re- 
strained it at his own table, and wished oth- 
ers to do the like; so it grew little by little, 
into disuse." 

Lyman Beecher claims the Massachusetts 
temperance society formed in 1813 to be the 
first one, the pledge of its members being to 
discontinue the use of liquor at entertain- 
ments, funerals, and auction sales, and to 
abstain from furnishing laborers with grog 
during haying time, as was then the custom. 
John B. Gough, however, mentions the con- 
stitution of a temperance society formed in 
New York in 1809, one of whose by-laws 
was, "Any member of this association who 
shall be convicted of intoxication shall be 
fined a quarter of a dollar, except such act 
of intoxication shall take place on the 



152 Americana Ebrietatis 

Fourth of July, or any other regularly ap- 
pointed military muster." 

In 1 8 17 a committee of New York citi- 
zens appointed to investigate the causes of 
pauperism reported that seven-eighths of the 
paupers were reduced to abject poverty by 
the sale of liquor. As far back as 1809 the 
Humane Society found eighteen hundred 
licensed dramshops scattered over the city, 
retailing liquor in small quantities, and of- 
fering every inducement to the poor to drink. 

New Hampshire required a selectman of 
each town to post the names of tipplers in 
every tavern and fined anyone ten dollars 
who sold them liquor. About this same 
time the legislature of Pennsylvania passed 
a law authorizing the governor to appoint 
a commission of nine to investigate the 
causes of pauperism in Philadelphia, and 
to report to the next legislature. The farm- 
ers of Upper Providence township, Penn- 
sylvania, met in the school house just be- 
fore harvest time and agreed not to give 
liquor to their harvest hands, nor to use it in 
the hay field or during harvest, nor to allow 
any one in their employ to use it. A gen- 



Temperance Societies 153 

eral movement for temperance swept over 
the Atlantic states. The Portland Society, 
auxiliary to the Massachusetts Society for 
Suppressing Intemperance, reported that 
out of eighty-five persons in the workhouse, 
seventy-one became paupers through drink. 
A grand jury at Albany drew a picture of 
their city quite as dismal, and presented the 
immense number of dramshops and corner 
groceries where liquor was retailed by the 
cent's worth as an evil and a nuisance to 
society. 

One of the most interesting documents in 
early temperance agitation is the letter of the 
mayor of Philadelphia in 1821, showing the 
condition of the liquor traffic at that time. 
He pointed out the dangers of the tippling 
houses and corner groceries, where liquor 
was sold by the cent's worth to children five 
years old, and paid for often with stolen 
goods. 

The liquor traffic left an indelible im- 
press upon the geography of the country. 
The oldest American reference to the word 
RUM is in the Massachusetts statute of 1657 
prohibiting the sale of strong liquors 



154 Americana Ebrietatis 

"whether known by the name of rum, strong 
water, brandywine, etc." The Dutch in 
New York called rum brandywine, and it 
conferred its name upon the river which in 
turn gave its name to one of the most famous 
battles of the Revolution. Among places 
may be found such names as Rumford, 
Wineland, Winesburg, and others. 

When in 1828 Mr. Garrison assumed the 
editorial control of the Journal of the Times 
at Bennington, Vermont, he distinctly 
avowed that he had three objects in view, 
"The suppression of Intemperance and its 
associate vices, the gradual emancipation of 
every slave in the Republic, the perpetuity 
of the national peace." He contributed to 
the third object; he accomplished the sec- 
ond; the first problem he left unsolved as a 
bequest to this generation. 






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